Automobile: Stellantis again announces record profits

The group from the merger of PSA with Fiat Chrysler sprayed its already exceptional performance of 2021, with a net profit of 16.8 billion euros for 2022, an increase of 26 %.

by Jean-Michel Normand

At Stellantis, a record result hunts another. Two years after its creation, in 2021, the group formed following the merger of PSA with Fiat Chrysler sprayed the performance, already deemed exceptional, carried out in 2021, announcing, Wednesday, February 22, a net profit of 16.8 billions of euros in 2022, an increase of 26 %. It is not as well as total (20.5 billion euros), but it is better than LVMH (14.1 billion). Turnover increased by 18 % (179.6 billion euros) and the operating margin reaches 13 %, while the objective was to reach the 12 % threshold in… 2030.

These performances, which are part of a context of positive results for the automotive industry, will allow Stellantis to reward its shareholders, which will receive 4.2 billion euros in dividends. To its staff will be distributed 2 billion euros, an additional envelope of 200 million.

In France, the 44,000 employees will obtain a bonus of 3,882 euros net at least, ie “2.4 months salary for the first levels of remuneration”. A gesture of unpublished redistribution for ten years, but which will perhaps not appeal to the recurring controversy about the remuneration of the Director General, Carlos Tavares, who had pocketed 19 million euros for the financial year 2021.

ruthless cost hunting 2>

To display such results, the group has benefited from the positive effects of the dollar rise, but above all it continued the ruthless cost hunting, of which it has made a specialty, to lower its profitability threshold. He also set out to play the synergies between the two founding entities of Stellantis, who represented 7.1 billion euros, while the prospect drawn up was reaching 5 billion in two years.

These efforts, deemed painful by the unions, have contributed to absorbing the increase of 9 billion euros in industrial costs caused in particular by the inflationary drift of raw materials. The manufacturer was also found with the shortage of semiconductors and logistical difficulties, some of which, within the group, believe that they could have been managed with more efficiency.

The other great strength of Stellantis lies in its ability to increase average prices. The increase of 41 % of its global sales of electric cars (288,000 units in 2022), which allows it to occupy second place in Europe on this market behind Volkswagen, and the first with regard to utilities, strongly contributed. To the twenty-three existing electric models, nine will be added in 2023. However, not everyone advances at the same rate within the Stellantis entity.

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/Media reports cited above.