Posts Tagged motors
Hyundai Quarterly Profit Dips 10%
Posted by alibabarika in Automotive Articles on July 6, 2011
The Hyundai Motor Company said that net profit declined for a fifth straight quarter as sales plummeted because of labor strikes and intense competition in China. Hyundai, a leading Korean automaker, said last Wednesday that net profit in the first quarter that ended March 31 had fallen by 10.2 percent to 307.4 billion won or $329.22 million, down from 342.39 billion won a year earlier, the company said in a statement.
Last year’s first-quarter figure was revised up from an initial 318.83 billion won due to changes in South Korean accounting regulations, said Hyundai spokesman Jake Jang. Quarterly sales declined 2.6 percent to 6.684 trillion won or $7.16 billion. The first quarter results for the world’s sixth-largest automaker was worse than anticipated. The average estimate of eleven analysts surveyed by the Dow Jones Newswires forecast that Hyundai would report a net profit of 392.70 billion won or $421 million.
Saab Restarting Car Production
Posted by alibabarika in Automotive Articles on July 6, 2011
Saab restarted its production lines Friday after a long layoff. The Swedish car company was shut down for seven weeks due to serious financial problems. These problems included a lack of money with which to pay suppliers. Many of its suppliers stopped making deliveries to the plant on April 5, 2011, which forced the automaker to shut down. Now that the Trollhatten factory is open again Saab claims to have orders for 8,000 cars.
The automobile manufacturer has long had financial problems. Production has been in serious decline for several years. In 2010 Saab produced only 32,048 cars, down from 102,915 in 2007. The car company’s line-up currently consists of variations on just three different models. These are the 9-3, the 9-4x and the 9-5. The company also has two new models in development, one of which is not due out until the fall of 2012. General Motors, which owned the brand from 2000 until 2010, almost shut down the line when it had a difficult time finding a buyer. GM still supplies Saab with engines and transmissions. It also makes the Saab 9-4x. When GM located a buyer it had to obtain a loan from the European Investment Bank to complete the deal. The Swedish government guaranteed the loan.
Global Auto Trends Heading Your Way
Posted by alibabarika in Automotive Articles on July 6, 2011
Until recently, the U.S. auto market was insulated from what took place in much of the rest of the world. Passenger vehicles built in North America, particularly in Canada and the United States, were often different from what car manufacturers built in Europe, Asia, South America and elsewhere.
Auto Trends
Vw Does Not Only Want To Be Europe’s Largest But To Become The World’s Number 1
Posted by alibabarika in Automotive Articles on June 6, 2011
The first quarter results that Volkswagen has obtained is exactly what Porsche Chief Executive Wendelin Wiedeking has expected it would be when he opted to increase his controlling stake in Europe’s largest automaker. The operating profit that Volkswagen—Europe’s largest automaker and manufacturer of top-of-the-line VW Beetle Part– has gained for the first three months of 2007 has increase to 81 percent or $1.48 billion creating a 4.1 percent margin. The profit after tax of $1.0 billion has increased by 127 percent.
The VW brand division was the dominating brand for the first quarter sales drive but the star performers were Audi and Skoda. The soaring sales of new models at the Czech-based Skoda have been able to deliver an 8.5 percent operating margin—surpassing even the premium auto maker BMW. Skoda’s car sales increase by 15.5 percent in the first quarter resulting from its sales of Octavia compact and Roomster station wagon.