Cars and Drivers

Volkswagen Posts Huge Annual Loss on Small Increase in Revenue

Douglas A. McIntyre

Published: April 24, 2016 6:24 am

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 10:24 am

The board of Volkswagen was able to say that revenue increased modestly while the company posted a huge loss due to the diesel emissions scandal. It would not seem the problems were bad, based on the board’s assessment:

The Volkswagen Group’s operations developed very robustly in fiscal year 2015 in spite of the emissions issue. Consolidated sales revenue rose by 5.4 percent to EUR 213.3 billion on the back of improvements in the mix in the automotive business and the strong performance of the Financial Service.

Actually, the numbers were not terribly robust. The revenue increased certainly wasn’t and the bottom line has to frighten even VW’s most ardent advocates:

he solid development of sales revenue is not reflected in the relevant earnings figures: the operating result, which had amounted to EUR 12.7 billion in 2014, stood at EUR –4.1 billion in 2015. This figure includes negative special items totaling EUR 16.9 billion. At EUR 12.8 billion, the operating profit before extraordinary charges was slightly higher than the prior-year figure.

And the performance of VW’s unit sales was also disappointing. Global vehicle sales fell 2% to 10 million.