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(Alliance News) - Aston Martin Lagonda Global Holdings PLC's revenue plummeted and loss widened sharply during a six months which the luxury car maker on Wednesday described as "intense and challenging".
The FTSE 250 firm did, however, paint an optimistic picture about its future, hailing its new executive team and looking ahead to 2021 when it will have a "competitive" Formula One racing team offering its brand more exposure.
Aston Martin shares were up 6.7% at 52.90 pence each in London on Wednesday morning. The Valkyrie hyper carmaker's shares are down 97% from its October 2018 IPO price of 1,900p.
Revenue in the six months to June 30 fell 64% annually to GBP146.0 million from GBP406.0 million and its pretax loss stretched to GBP227.4 million from GBP80.0 million.
Total retail sales slumped 41% year-on-year to 1,770 cars. The second quarter was hit the worst, falling 48%, after a 31% slump in the first.
There are encouraging signs from China however, where retail sales were up 11% year-on-year during the month of June.
"This has been a very intense and challenging six months. In January, I and my co-investors in the Yew Tree Consortium, committed to make a significant investment in Aston Martin and I took on the role of executive chair from April to give clear leadership to the business, our partners and our dealers. Since then we have been fully engaged in executing the initial reset in order to achieve our ambition to build Aston Martin into one of the great global luxury car brands," Executive Chair Lawrence Stroll said.
It was a busy first half in the car maker's board room. Stroll took over as executive chair in April. In May, Andy Palmer, former chief executive officer, stepped down with immediate effect to be replaced by Mercedes executive Tobias Moers. Moers joins the company on August 1.
Palmer's position as CEO had been the subject of speculation since billionaire Lawrence Stroll led a consortium that bought a 25% stake in Aston Martin, and then sold part of that to another consortium led by Mercedes-AMG Formula 1 team principal Toto Wolff.
Aston Martin in June hired Kenneth Gregor as chief financial officer as Stroll continued to put his stamp on the luxury car maker.
"We have recruited an outstanding new senior executive team with the appointment of Tobias Moers as CEO and Ken Gregor as CFO - both bring deep experience of this industry," Stroll said.
"From next year, we will have the great benefit of a highly competitive Aston Martin branded Formula One team giving us a significant global marketing platform to further strengthen our brand and engage with our customers and partners across the world."
By Eric Cunha; ericcunha@alliancenews.com
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