Porsche sees 2012 profit after huge accounting write-down

Indebted German carmaker Porsche SE said demand for its iconic 911 sports car would help it post a 2012 profit, a year after huge accounting writedowns linked to its botched merger with Volkswagen nearly inflicted a 2011 loss.
Profit after tax at Porsche SE, the holding company which owns a majority stake in VW, took a 4.37 billion euro ($5.69 billion) hit last year after a revaluation of Porsche SE's sell options on the sports car business burdened results, Porsche said in a statement on March 15. It posted an after tax result of 59 million euros for 2011.
"We're noting a pleasant development in the current business year," Chief Financial Officer Hans Dieter Poetsch said at a press conference, citing reduced interest payments and a shrinking impact of the revaluation of the put-call options.
Porsche has enjoyed high order intake in the first quarter, in particular strong demand for its 911 sports car, a new generation of which went on sale in Europe and the United States last December, said Matthias Mueller, head of the automotive division.
"We will keep up our high pace of growth, perhaps even increase it yet again," Mueller said. Porsche and VW agreed a merger in 2009 after Porsche racked up more than 10 billion euros of debt attempting to buy Europe's biggest car maker outright. But VW tore up the deal last September citing unquantifiable legal risks including a criminal probe into the holding's former management team.
The car makers have since been exploring other ways to fold the remainder of Porsche's automotive business into VW, which acquired 49.9 percent of Porsche for 3.9 billion euros in December 2009. VW faces a tax bill of around 1 billion euros if it buys the remainder of Porsche before 2014.
An agreement does not seem imminent, not least because both companies are still negotiating with the tax authorities. Martin Winterkorn, chief executive of VW and Porsche's holding company, said at VW's annual press conference on March 12 that the company still faced "several hurdles" to fully combine with Porsche.
"We're still in the midst of our verifications," Poetsch said, adding that VW and Porsche hope to combine before 2014 to reap synergies of more than 700 million euros.
Porsche, whose deliveries rose 22 percent last year to a record 119,000 vehicles, will propose a higher dividend to the annual shareholders' meeting on June 25. Holders of preferred stock may be paid 76 cents per share while ordinary shareholders may receive 75.4 cents per share. Preferred shareholders earned a 50 cents dividend for the previous 2010 business year.