Boulogne-Billancourt (dpa) – After record losses, the French carmaker Renault ended the past year in the black again and is still on the road to recovery.
Despite the lack of chips and declining sales figures, a profit of 967 million euros was achieved, as Renault announced in Boulogne-Billancourt near Paris. In 2020, the company had made a loss of eight billion euros in the Corona crisis. Group sales increased by 6.3 percent to 46.2 billion euros in 2021.
“We have largely exceeded our 2021 financial targets – despite the impact of semiconductor shortages and rising raw material prices,” said Renault CEO Luca de Meo. Rising prices, a strict austerity policy and the corporate strategy, which favors value over volume, have contributed to this. The carmaker announced that it would continue to focus on higher-margin, more expensive models and on selling to private customers instead of fleet operators and car rental companies. CFO Clotilde Delbos described the performance as a further step in the carmaker’s recovery.
The introduction of new technologies and regulations could ensure that the cars of the future will be more expensive, said the general manager. This in turn could lead to new cars becoming unaffordable for some customers. Renault is prepared for this with inexpensive models from the Dacia brand. After small cars, Dacia should also increasingly offer mid-range models.
As the self-imposed targets have been exceeded, Renault is considering faster repayment of government loans granted during the crisis. Instead of 2024, the four billion euros are to be repaid in full in 2023 and possibly already in the current year, after one billion was repaid last year, it said.
Renault sold 2.7 million cars and light commercial vehicles worldwide in 2021, 4.5 percent fewer than in the previous year, which was impacted by corona lockdowns. Around 500,000 cars could not be built as planned due to delivery problems with electronic components. The problem will persist, especially in the first half of 2022, and around 300,000 fewer vehicles than planned are expected to be produced for the year as a whole.
© dpa-infocom, dpa:220218-99-190160/4
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