Stellantis Is In Big Trouble Following Awful First Half Of 2024 – MASHAHER

Its operating margin on adjusted EBIT shrunk to just below 10 percent, slipping below the double-digit margin it aims to achieve for the full year.

“The company’s performance in the first half of 2024 fell short of our expectations,” CEO Carlos Tavares said in a statement on July 25.

Margins declined most significantly in North America, Stellantis’s key region for profits, after shipments declined 18 percent amid an unfavorable model lineup and pressure on prices, the company said.

Chief Financial Officer Natalie Knight said Stellantis is taking “decisive actions to address operational challenges.”

Measures include inventory reduction, especially in North America.

“(That) is the market that needs the most work and where we are most concentrated when we look at the second half,” Knight said. “There are operational issues we have had in North America where I think we could have performed stronger.”

Knight said Stellantis would reduce production in North America this quarter, as well as prices. “That’s one of the things that is important for us, to calibrate how the supply and demand meet,” she said.

Knight suggested the company may reconsider what would be “the best home” for Maserati, even though for now the group remains focused on driving improvements at the Italian luxury brand, whose shipments plummeted by more than half to 6,500 units in the first six months.

Stellantis is under increasing pressure as it deals with high inventory levels and a string of executive departures in the U.S.

The company has already extensively cut costs, with €500 million more in savings planned for the second half.

Some analysts have started flagging the limits of Tavares’ strategy on costs. He has also faced pushback from shareholders and advisory firms over his $39 million pay package for last year, a 60 percent increase from 2022 levels.

Analysts at Citi said in a note they expect Stellantis’s problems to continue. “We see no real improvement until and unless Stellantis removes the overhang from inventories – which itself would put pressure on full-year …margins,” they wrote.

Operating profit for the three months ended June was 4.3 trillion won ($3 billion), compared with the 4.2 trillion won median estimate compiled by Bloomberg. The profit was a record, at least since 2010, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Revenue rose 6.6% from a year ago to 45 trillion won, the Seoul-based company said.

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Hyundai also said it plans to go forward with a listing of its India unit by the end of 2024. The initial public offering could raise as much as $3.5 billion, people familiar with the matter have said, and will start gauging investor interest this month, with a listing likely in September or October, they said.

“India is the world’s fourth-biggest stock market, it is doing very well,” Lee Seung Jo, Hyundai’s chief financial officer, said in a call with analysts. “We are preparing for new growth in the country.”

Hyundai’s shift to hybrids and SUVs, such as a new Santa Fe released last year, helped the company offset the losses in EVs, Hanwha Investment & Securities wrote in a note before the earnings announcement. Hyundai plans to release the new hybrid Tucson in Europe and the Casper Electric in South Korea in the second half, the note said.

Hyundai sold about 122,000 hybrid vehicles in the second quarter, accounting for 11.6% of total deliveries. Battery-powered vehicles accounted for 5.6% of total shipments, compared with 7.4% a year earlier.

“Hybrids are making almost similar profit margins with gas-powered vehicles, which is in double-digit,” Lee said. EVs are generating at least low-single-digit margins, due to higher incentives given to dealers, he added.

Total retail sales in the second quarter were 1.03 million, dropping 3% from a year earlier, according to its earnings presentation. Value-added products, such as sports-utility vehicles and luxury brand Genesis, accounted 61% of the total. Retail sales in North America climbed 5.2%, while those in Europe fell 1%. China saw a steep decline of 32%, while India posted a 1% gain.

Hyundai plans to hold its annual investor day in August with analysts to discuss its long-term business plan. It will address details on shareholder returns as well as the operation of its new plant in the US state of Georgia, Lee said.

GM was forced to idle its nearby Wentzville Assembly plant in Missouri on Monday because the workers at the Lear Wentzville facility, which supplies the seats for GM’s midsize pickups and vans, went on strike at midnight Sunday. That was when their contract expired and they had not reached a new tentative agreement with the company.

The Lear facility produces the seats as part of a just-in-time production system at GM’s Wentzville plant. That means Lear makes the exact number of seats GM needs at the exact time GM needs it, with very little kept in inventory. So without the seats being produced, GM had to stop the assembly line and send some 4,600 workers home until Thursday.

GM spokesman Kevin Kelly confirmed that Wentzville restarted operations Thursday morning.

“Our supplier has reached a tentative agreement, and our focus is to resume regular production as quickly as possible for the good of our customers,” Kelly said in a statement.

Lear spokesman Brian Corbett told the Free Press, “We are pleased to have reached a tentative agreement with the UAW at our Wentzville facility. We are focused on resuming normal operations.”

UAW Local 282, which represents the Lear Wentzville workforce, reached the tentative agreement late Wednesday and finalized it in the early morning hours, during which time Lear strikers returned to work, UAW Local 282 President Bill Hugeback told the Free Press on Thursday.

Hugeback said the first shift was operating at the Lear facility Thursday but, “it’s probably going to take a little while to catch back up on production.”

As part of the agreement, Hugeback said the workforce will receive a raise in wages, but he declined to offer any more details until the union could print it up and hand it out to the workers later.

“We’ll let them read for it for a couple days and meet on it and then vote,” Hugeback said. “They’re happy that they’re going back to work and the strike is over. As far as the contract is concerned, they don’t know all that’s agreed to yet, we have to print out the pamphlets and hand them out.”

The automaker has previously said it will introduce EVs employing next-generation batteries globally from 2026, manufactured by its EV-focused unit BEV Factory.

The company is targeting sales of 3.5 million EVs annually by 2030, with just under half of those made by the BEV Factory unit. It sold 104,000 EVs in 2023.

The amount Toyota would spend on the battery plant and the start date for its construction have yet to be finalised, according to Nikkei, which did not say where it got the information.