Carmaker Stellantis reveals sharply lower 2024 results

Business is bad. Car manufacturer Stellantis published its results for the 2024 financial year on Wednesday, February 26. As expected, given the difficulties encountered last year with sluggish car sales and CEO Carlos Tavares, ousted along the way , the group is reporting a very bad situation. Net sales fell to €156.9 billion, a 17% drop compared to 2023. The same goes for net profit, which fell by 70%, to €5.5 billion.

And if in 2021, at the merger of PSA and Fiat Chrysler, Carlos Tavares had promised investors a double-digit operating margin over the entire decade, it is now only 5.5% in 2024, compared to 12.8% in 2023. Difficulties known internally, which had already caused the departure of the Portuguese from his position as CEO of the group at the end of last year. In 2024, the manufacturer even had to dip 6 billion euros into its cash. Stellantis was nevertheless coming off two record years: 16.8 and 18.6 billion euros in profits respectively in 2022 and 2023, which had led to 5.7 billion in share buybacks and dividend payments in spring 2023, then 7.7 billion a year later.

But the problems multiplied in 2024, in Europe and the United States. On the old continent, turnover fell by 11%, to 59 billion euros, and plummeted by 27%, to just over 63 billion euros in the United States. Stellantis was slow, across the Atlantic, to align its prices with those of the competition while this market is crucial for the group. A situation made even more difficult by the overall reduction in sales, by the 132% drop in shipping volumes or the unavailability of certain models in stock. On the electric side, vehicle sales, which had previously experienced a phenomenal rise, declined while they had jumped by 47% in 2023 compared to the previous year. In 2024, they shrank by 2.2%, despite the implementation of electric social leasing.

“We are firmly committed to gaining market share and improving our financial performance through 2025,” said Chairman John Elkann, who has been interim chairman since December, in a statement. However, the Franco-Italian-American automaker has not forecast a major improvement in its profitability, as it still expects a “mid-single-digit” margin on its adjusted operating profit for 2025.