Volkswagen Posts €5.82 Billion Q3 Loss on Porsche and China

Volkswagen is heading for its first annual loss since the diesel scandal. The group reported a net loss of roughly €5.82 billion for the third quarter, bringing the result after tax for the first nine months to minus €2.72 billion, the company said in Wolfsburg.

Much of the damage comes from bookkeeping charges, but not all of it. Volkswagen expects special costs of about €10 billion this year, of which €8.7 billion have already been booked. The biggest item is a non-cash writedown of around €6.4 billion on the goodwill of Porsche, reflecting lower expectations for the subsidiary. Without special effects, the group says it could have posted an operating profit of €8.8 billion. Revenue after nine months was €233.4 billion, down 2.2 percent.

Electric success that costs margin

VW is on track for about eight million deliveries worldwide this year. In Europe, electric cars are a bright spot: one in five vehicles delivered through September was fully electric, and around 40 percent of the order backlog is for EVs. The small-car family around the ID. Polo alone has 150,000 orders.

CFO Arno Antlitz said demand is at a level the group had only expected for 2029. Yet an EV currently earns less than a comparable combustion model. The ID. Cross reaches 70 to 80 percent of the margin of a comparable combustion car, and other models fare worse. Antlitz expects the effect to intensify in coming months, so costs must fall. He is confident VW can meet EU fleet CO2 limits and avoid penalties for now.

China turns from profit engine to problem

China sales fell by just over 30 percent to 1.38 million vehicles in the first nine months. VW's China chief Ralf Brandstätter called the market "in free fall"; around 24 million cars were sold there in 2025, but fewer than 19 million are expected in 2026. At its peak, VW sold more than four million cars a year in China. The group now expects roughly break-even before writedowns for 2026 and sees a considerable risk that the fourth quarter turns negative. It also cut the value of wholly owned Chinese subsidiaries by about €1 billion.

The restructuring under CEO Oliver Blume adds costs, including the planned sale of the Osnabrück plant to investor Aurelius and the state of Lower Saxony, who want to refocus it on defense. Further charges are likely in the fourth quarter, such as early-retirement schemes. Management expects at most a small profit in day-to-day business.