Aston Martin Counts on $3 Million Valkyrie as SUV Drives Rebound
Aston Martin Beats Profit Expectations After Deliveries Double
(Bloomberg) -- Aston Martin Lagonda Global Holdings Plc’s rollout of the $3 million Valkyrie hypercar is expected to deliver another push in the manufacturer’s restructuring plans.
The super-car maker, which was rescued by Canadian Billionaire Lawrence Stroll last year, plans to ship “double digit numbers of” Valkyries in the current quarter, Chief Executive Officer Tobias Moers said Thursday. The sold out car follows on from strong demand for Aston’s $180,000 DBX SUV that’s helped the carmaker swing to an operating profit during the current quarter.
“Producing the Valkyrie is like assembling a Formula 1 car on an assembly line,” Moers said in an interview. “It’s the most complex car I ever saw in my life to assemble.”
Aston is in the midst of a restructuring plan that included a vital injection of cash and clearing high dealer inventories. All 150 coupe models of the Valkyrie are sold out, and the carmaker is currently deciding on allocations for the 85 open-top Spider variants after twice as many customers wanted to buy the car. The complexity in building the car means it can produce only 3 a week, Moers said.
Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization swung to a profit of 23.5 million pounds ($32.1 million) during the third quarter, the company said, ahead of an average analysts’ estimate of 18.4 million pounds. Aston rose as much as 3.6% in early trading in London.
“We see this as a solid quarter and a step towards meeting the back-end weighted full year targets,” Citigroup analysts Gabriel Adler and Uzair Alam said in a note. Meeting annual “guidance will be a key milestone in our view and should increase conviction in the company’s mid-term turnaround plan.”
Stroll has pushed the British carmaker to forge closer ties with Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz, which Aston says will help it meet the challenges of increased electrification as carmakers rush to meet stricter emissions rules and planned bans on internal combustion engines.
All models will either have a hybrid or fully electric option by around 2025, and purely battery-powered cars will account for half of sales by the end of the decade.
Aston has been impacted by the ongoing supply shortages in the automotive industry although Moers said that given its smaller volumes, production hasn’t been disrupted. Dealer inventories are down to their lowest levels and are driving up prices of used cars, he said.
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