The owner of car brands including Fiat, Chrysler and Peugeot has reported a steep fall in sales, blaming production delays and flagging European demand.
Stellantis reported revenues on Thursday of €33bn (£27.6bn) for the July to September quarter, a drop of 27% compared with the same period a year earlier.
Shipments of cars fell to 1.1m, down 20% on last year. Stellantis blamed the drop partly on delays to the production of some models in Europe as it switches factories from producing petrol and diesel cars to electric and hybrid models.
Carmakers around the world have been struggling with relatively weak demand amid higher interest rates, while coming up with the large investments needed to make the electric switch. Germany’s Volkswagen this week reported a slump in profits, with BMW and Mercedes-Benz also reporting weaker sales.
Stellantis, which is headquartered in Amsterdam and which also owns the Vauxhall, Citroën, Jeep and Maserati brands, has struggled particularly recently. In September it issued a profit warning because of waning demand and increased competition from Chinese rivals, who are targeting the new electric vehicle market in particular.
Its chief executive, Carlos Tavares, disclosed this month that he would step down in 2026. In an effort to secure his legacy, he has launched a turnaround drive in North America, including cutting the number of cars sitting on dealer forecourts.
The price of Stellantis shares listed in Milan rose by 2.6% on Thursday to €12.55. Analysts, led by Patrick Hummel at the investment bank UBS, said the figures were the “expected bad print, but not worse” for a company whose share price has more than halved from a peak above €27 in March.
Stellantis is racing to match its Chinese competitors with a barrage of new battery electric models in Europe, while still producing petrol and hybrids.
However, the company has also pushed back against European and British regulations that force carmakers to sell more electric cars, including threatening to close UK factories. Tavares said this month that the future of its UK factories would be decided “in the next few weeks”.
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Tavares has been open about the threat from Asian competitors but he has taken a different approach from that of many European rivals by agreeing to sell cars by the Chinese manufacturer Leapmotor.
Despite the EU’s moves to impose tariffs totalling up to 45% on car imports from China, the march of the country’s manufacturers is expected to continue. Sales at China’s biggest electric carmaker, BYD, passed Tesla’s for the first time in the third quarter of 2024, and it is looking to expand beyond its home market. BYD this week said it had poached Stellantis’s former UK chief, Maria Grazia Davino, to lead its European operations.
