Aston Martin’s shares skid after it drops sales volume target

Aston Martin’s shares skid after it drops sales volume target

By Aby Jose Koilparambil

(Reuters) – British luxury carmaker Aston Martin unnerved investors on Tuesday by leaving out a sales volume target as it stuck to its medium-term financial goals.

Shares in the London-listed firm fell 4.3% to 346 pence by 0750 GMT.

“The dropping of an important figure such as a sales target is unlikely to be an accident by any means and that could play a part in spooking investors’ confidence in a company whose track record of meeting the targets is weak at its best,” said AJ Bell analyst Russ Mould.

Aston Martin, the maker of cars favoured by fictional British spy agent James Bond, had previously forecast annual wholesale volumes of around 10,000 units by 2025.

In March, the company had said it was on track to meet the 2025 targets but with “significantly lower volumes”.

At its capital markets day on Tuesday, Aston Martin maintained its targets to achieve annual revenue of 2 billion pounds ($2.55 billion) by 2025 and an adjusted annual profit of 500 million pounds in 2025, but sales volume targets got no mention.

Its shares fell after jumping 11% on Monday following a deal with Lucid Group that will give the U.S. EV maker a 3.7% stake in Aston Martin in return for providing “high performance” technology.

The shares have surged about 125% so far this year on upbeat outlook and the Lucid deal.

Aston Martin said on Tuesday that it expects adjusted profit margins of about 30% by fiscal year 2028, compared to previous expectations of about 25% by 2025.

It also said it expects to invest about 2 billion pounds over the next five years in electrification and long-term growth.

($1 = 0.7855 pounds)

(Reporting by Aby Jose Koilparambil in Bengaluru; Editing by Nivedita Bhattacharjee and Susan Fenton)