Belgium’s largest car distributor D’Ieteren has revised up its full-year forecast after a far better than expected performance in the first half.
D’Ieteren, whcih distributes Volkswagen, Seat, Audi, Skoda, Bentley, Porsche and Lamborghini, and has a majority stake in Avis Europe and in Belron, a vehicle glass repair and replacement business, said its pre-tax profit rose 4.9% to EUR107.3m.
The average in a Reuters poll of five analysts was EUR82m.
The key outperformer was Belron, where pre-tax profit rose by 47.4%, partly due to acquisitions, but also due to favourable winter weather in Europe for the business.
For its car distribution business, D’Ieteren said the decrease of new car registrations in Belgium had been less severe than expected at 17.4%.
The company said it now expected a full-year decline in the low single digits. It had previously predicted a drop of around 15%.
