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Sales in December surged 39 percent from a year
earlier to 20,644 sports cars and sport-utility vehicles (SUVs),
boosting full-year deliveries to a record 189,849, Porsche said
on Thursday. That marked a 17 percent gain on 2013 levels.
More than two-thirds of Porsche models sold are SUVs, thanks to
its new Macan model which hit dealerships last April, sales data
showed.
About 34,000 of the 45,000 customers who bought the Macan, which
is smaller than the top-selling Cayenne SUV, were new to the
Porsche brand and previously owned a model from BMW, Mercedes or
another rival, Chief Executive Matthias Mueller told reporters
at the carmaker's base in Stuttgart, Germany.
Separately, the 61-year-old Mueller, previously top product
strategist at parent VW, ruled himself out as a potential
successor to VW group CEO Martin Winterkorn.
Winterkorn, 67, stoked speculation about his departure in an
interview last October when he noted that when his contract
expires in December 2016 he would be 69 and old enough to quit.
"I am not a potential successor to Winterkorn," Mueller said. "I
am too old for the job. It is no solution for VW to put a
63-year-old at the helm in 2016," he said, adding he had already
communicated the message at VW headquarters.
Porsche, which contributed a fifth of VW group's nine-month
operating profit of 9.4 billion euros ($11.06 billion), could
see its operating margin drop to 13 percent of sales
temporarily, from about 17-18 percent, because of spending on
fuel efficiency and connectivity, Mueller said.
The carmaker is targeting an operating margin of at least 15
percent over a five-year period.
($1 = 0.8500 euros)
(Reporting by Ilona Wissenbach; writing by Andreas Cremer;
Editing by Thomas Atkins and Susan Fenton)
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