Porsche AG cautiously upbeat on 2023 sales after bumper 2022

By Victoria Waldersee and Jan Schwartz

WOLFSBURG, Germany (Reuters) -Porsche AG expects sales to rise to as much as 42 billion euros ($45 billion) in 2023 after the luxury carmaker sped to record earnings and revenue in its first year since its initial public offering, as it boosted car deliveries.

Chief Financial Officer Lutz Meschke, however, warned that supply chain issues, geopolitical strains and rising inflation still presented a challenge for the industry.

Porsche AG, historically a huge money spinner for the Volkswagen Group, which owns 75% minus one ordinary share of the group, is targeting a margin of 17-19% this year with a long-term goal of 20%, it said in a statement.

The luxury carmaker's outlook chimes with competitors like Ferrari, Aston Martin and former parent Volkswagen Group, who vowed stronger results in 2023 as the end of 2022 provided some relief from supply chain bottlenecks that had weighed on the first nine months of the year.

Porsche reported a 27.4% rise in annual operating profit to 6.8 billion euros on revenue of 37.6 billion, slightly undershooting a consensus 6.86 billion in earnings and 38.3 billion in revenue expected by 19 analysts polled by Refinitiv.

Shares in the company, which have risen steadily since they started trading on the market at 82.50 last September, were down 3.3% at 1112 GMT, broadly in line with the STOXX Europe 600 Automobiles & Parts index.

Analysts at Jefferies pointed to the "small miss" in annual operating profit.

Deliveries rose 2.6% to nearly 310,000 cars.

"Our keys to success are improved price positioning, a strong product mix, increased group sales, currency effects, and last but not least, our consistent cost discipline," Meschke said on an analyst call.

He also said the company was investing 20 billion euros in digitalisation in the next five years.

Porsche, which overtook Volkswagen as Europe's most valuable carmaker within a week of its September stock market listing, will pay a dividend of 1 euro per ordinary share and 1.01 euros per preferred share for 2022, it said.

The medium-term target is to distribute roughly half of after-tax profit in dividends, Meschke said.

($1 = 0.9351 euros)

(Reporting by Victoria Waldersee and Jan Schwartz; Additional reporting by Christoph Steitz; Editing by Paul Carrel, Friederike Heine and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)