Porsche Swings To Near $3.6 Billion Loss After EV Pullback

Porsche AG suffered its first quarterly loss as a listed company, with the luxury-car manufacturer taking a €3.1 billion ($3.6 billion) hit this year from scaling back its electric ambitions and US tariffs.

The 911 maker reported a €967 million operating loss in the three months through September, after delaying some of its electric-vehicle plans and scrapping a program to build its own batteries. A demand slump in China has also taken a toll.

Porsche has struggled of late, with waning enthusiasm for EVs and supply chain bottlenecks exacerbating weak sales in China and US import tariffs. The poor performance saw the stock drop out of Germany’s benchmark DAX index. The company cut its guidance last month for the fourth time this year, a move that also hit parent Volkswagen AG.

The company is banking on a return to form starting next year. “We expect 2025 to be the trough,” Chief Financial Officer Jochen Breckner said. Porsche’s third-quarter revenue dipped to €8.7 billion.

The struggles have forced Porsche into more drastic measures. Among changes to its EV plans, a new range of sport utility vehicles positioned above the Cayenne that was going to be exclusively electric will instead only be available with combustion-engine and hybrid powertrains. The automaker has also swapped out the majority of its board members and is trying to push through more cost cuts.

Chief Executive Officer Oliver Blume will in January be handing the torch of those restructuring efforts to Michael Leiters, a former Porsche executive who previously ran UK supercar maker McLaren Automotive Ltd. Leiters’ experience in SUVs — he previously worked on the top-selling Macan and Cayenne models — could prove valuable as Porsche pushes to develop a replacement for the combustion-engine Macan, which is being phased out next year.

Porsche’s SUV strategy will play a key role in the company’s success in the US, which recently overtook China to become its biggest market. The company’s lack of production there means it has to import all its cars from Europe, leaving it to shoulder 15% tariffs under President Donald Trump’s policy changes. Porsche has reviewed the possibility of assembling one of its own models in the US, Bloomberg previously reported.