Ferrari despite record orders postpones 2022 targets due to pandemic

[May 04, 2021]    MILAN (Reuters) -Ferrari on Tuesday postponed its 2022 financial targets by a year due to the pandemic despite reporting a record order book, sending shares in the luxury carmaker lower.

Ferrari Roma is unveiled during its first world presentation in Rome, Italy, November 14, 2019. REUTERS/Guglielmo Mangiapane

"We expect the prudent steps we took in 2020 and are continuing in 2021 to adjust our expenditure in response to the Covid-19 emergency, will postpone by one year the achievement of our year-end 2022 guidance," Chairman and acting CEO John Elkann said in a statement, presenting the company's first quarter results.

Shares in Ferrari fell as much as 6.8% and by 1205 GMT were down 4.4%.

In its plan presented in 2018, the automaker behind the 'Cavallino Rampante' or 'Prancing Horse' badge guided for adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) to grow between 1.8-2.0 billion euros.

It targeted a margin over adjusted EBITDA of more than 38%.

However, the company said on Tuesday its "excellent" results, a "robust" net order intake and a record order book made it confident it would reach the top end of the forecasts it had set for this year.

In the first quarter, EBITDA rose 19% to 376 million euros ($452 million) versus the 369 million expected by analysts in a Reuters poll.

($1 = 0.8319 euros)

(Reporting by Giulio Piovaccari, editing by Jason Neely)

[© 2021 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved.]

Copyright 2021 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.  Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.