Ferrari has indicated its expected financial results for 2009, in line with Italian law.
The luxury carmaker said it posted results slightly lower than 2008’s with a total of 6,250 new vehicles delivered to customers – a fall of only 5% despite the global sportscar market dropping 35% in 2009.
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Consolidated 2009 revenues dropped 7% to EUR1.78bn (US$2.43bn) and operating profit of EUR245m compared to EUR341m last year. Ferrari said the fall was due to lower volume and less favourable product mix as well as adverse exchange rates.
The weakness of the US dollar versus the euro also had a major impact since over 30% of sales were made in the currency.
Ferrari cited the “extraordinary success” of the California, while the most recent model, the 458 Italia, deliveries of which have only just started, had already received “exceptionally positive reviews”.
The UK remained among Ferrari’s top five markets and, although sales dropped last year, the country outperformed the global market fall for 2009.
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By GlobalData“Our [overall] market share increased by 10 points and we have been able to stay stable while the market has dropped by a huge amount,” a Ferrari spokesman told just-auto, without providing data.
“What we were able to do last year was move production around as our lead times are so long. We have got rampant demand in the Far East and Middle East as well as some eastern European countries.”
The Ferrari spokesman added such production shifts were allowing the automaker to provide customers who had previously had to wait up to two and a half years for delivery with an 18-24 month waiting time – “which is about the ideal for a customer to maintain exclusivity and resale value.”
The spokesman also noted the overall market for such cars in the EU had plummeted 37%, while the US had fallen 40%. “For us only to be down 5% demonstrates we are a global company,” he said.
Despite the positivity in the UK and other markets, Ferrari chairman Luca di Montezemolo nonetheless sounded a note of caution for the period ahead, noting 2010 would be “a very difficult year and the first small signs of recovery will not come until the autumn.”
Ferrari said Middle East sales increased 29% to 471 cars delivered, while 1,117 were delivered in the Asia Pacific region (China: 206). Japan was in the top five markets worldwide with 8% of total deliveries.
