British luxury car retailer HR Owen has warned that it will make a loss this year for the first time since 1993 despite industry forecasts last week that 2003 will be another record year for new car registrations, the Daily Telegraph reported.
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The report said the company blamed the setback on various factors, the most serious a factory delay in deliveries of Lamborghinis, Bentleys and Rolls-Royces. It forecast a pre-exceptional trading loss of £2 million for 2003 against a £2 million profit last year and the shares fell 16 to 165.5p, the paper added.
Chief executive Nick Lancaster reportedly said car makers were holding back new models to fix teething problems and this caused a backlog of orders which would take until next year to clear, and the company had to defer £2 million of profits.
The Daily Telegraph said the deficit will reflect a fall in corporate fleet sales at HR Owen’s inner London showrooms, which normally account for about half of sales within the boundaries of the London orbital motorway, the M25.
According to the newspaper, these dealerships sold 104,000 cars, priced from £12,000 to £100,000, to corporate customers in the first 11 months of 2003, compared with 121,000 in 2002 and 133,000 in 2001.
Nationwide, sales of luxury cars are running at 991,000 and are likely to match last year’s 1.09 million, helped by a good performance in the regions, the Daily Telegraph said.
Lancaster reportedly said HR Owen’s inner London showrooms had a “substantial” increase in company orders since the end of October and hoped the loss was a “blip”. The company expects to maintain the dividend “barring unforeseen circumstances”, the Daily Telegraph said.
