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Wolfsburg (dpa) - The Volkswagen Group is expecting about half as much profit in ongoing business for the past year after heavy sales losses in the Corona crisis.
As the Wolfsburg-based company announced, a value of around 10 billion euros is assumed for the operating result before special items - including, above all, further legal costs to deal with the diesel crisis.
This applies on the basis of preliminary figures; the final data should follow at the end of February.
VW has not yet given any specific information on net profit for 2020, but the “Dieselgate” charges have recently fallen noticeably.
In 2019, the group had posted an adjusted operating profit of a good 19.3 billion euros in day-to-day business.
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Sales have recently picked up again.
In the spring, the entire industry ran into major difficulties due to closed car dealerships, disrupted supply chains and the general decline in demand.
However, there are currently problems, for example due to missing chips for automotive electronics and new shutdowns in numerous countries.
Volkswagen pointed out the "unprecedented ongoing Covid-19 challenges".
In the fourth quarter, however, the overall situation continued to improve.
Sales recovered towards the end of the year.
"The sales revenues also increased accordingly," it said.
Details have not yet been given.
In 2019, the VW Group had sales of 252.6 billion euros worldwide, and net profit had climbed to 13.3 billion euros.
Overall, the 2020 pandemic caused the Group's deliveries to slip by 15.2 percent.
However, there was significant growth in alternative drives: more than tripling to just under 232,000 units was reported for pure electric vehicles, and an increase of 175 percent to around 190,000 units for plug-in hybrids.
The VW Group narrowly missed the new EU fleet requirements for CO2 emissions.
Due to the corresponding provisions, however, this should not have an additional impact on the result in the fourth quarter.
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When the business figures for the third quarter were presented at the end of October, the company had already reported a more stable development, after falling dramatically in the spring.
The net profit attributable to the shareholders leveled off between July and September at just under 2.6 billion euros.
Compared to the previous year's figures, however, the pandemic was still noticeable.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210122-99-129938 / 2