Porsche revises upwards first-half profits

Porsche, the German maker of luxury sports cars, revised upwards Monday its figures for earnings in the six-month period to January. Porsche, which runs its business year from August to July, said it had booked after-tax profit of 1.144 billion euros (1.5 billion dollars) in the six months to January, up from 169.8 million euros a year earlier.
In preliminary figures published in January, the car maker had said that first-half net profit amounted to 1.05 billion euros. Pre-tax profit also increased nearly sixfold, rising to 1.59 billion euros from 277.8 million euros, Porsche said. Unit sales fell by seven percent to 39,265 cars and revenues slipped by 1.4 percent to 3.07 billion euros, largely as a result of model changeovers.
Porsche said that its bottom line was boosted by an improved model mix and one-off gains of 520 million euros from hedging transactions connected with the acquisition of its stake in European auto giant Volkswagen. Looking ahead to the whole year, Porsche said it was confident that full-year earnings would exceed the 2.1 billion euros booked last year. Unit sales a levels.