British luxury car brand deep in the red

The auto industry worldwide had to fight hard due to the corona crisis. Many manufacturers have experienced significant financial losses – including the British manufacturer Aston Martin. Several million pounds were lost.

The ailing British luxury car maker Aston Martin slipped even deeper into the red in the first half of the year. The bottom line was that the company lost just under £ 200m (£ 200m), Aston Martin said in Gaydon on Wednesday. A year earlier, the company had posted a loss of just under £ 63 million. Sales slumped 64 percent to £ 146 million in the Corona crisis. Aston Martin has been sluggish in deliveries for a long time; in the first half of the year it was around 63 percent less with 1,770 cars.

New off-road vehicle to boost sales again

Aston Martin has high hopes for its first SUV, called the DBX. It is supposed to bring about the turnaround; the first copies were delivered in July. With him, the company wanted to more than double total production by 2023. One of the models is the successful SUV Urus from the noble competitor Lamborghini from the Volkswagen Group.

The company had a lot of money in hand for the start of production of the car. At the beginning of the year, Aston Martin had to be rescued by a financial injection from investors around the Formula 1 billionaire Lawrence Stroll, who is now the chairman of the board. Most recently, the British brought Tobias Moers on board from the Mercedes sports car subsidiary AMG as CEO, which starts in early August.

On the stock exchange since the end of 2018

Aston Martin Lagonda, as the company is called in full, went public in October 2018 for 1,900 pence per share. Quite quickly after that, the price went downhill rapidly – the issue of new shares also had a negative impact in the first half of the year. In the end, the share only cost around 50 pence. However, papers from the group, which is known primarily for cars from the James Bond films, reacted positively to the half-year figures. The price rose due to the lower than expected operating loss.

–