Volkswagen Group has reported profitable results in the third quarter of 2020, despite the effect of Covid-19 and lockdown of its 71 production factories in Europe for a period of time.  

The 2020 results will be less than last year, however VW Group still expects to report a profit at the end of the full year. 

Third quarter profit was US$3.78 billion (NZ$5.7b) as opposed to US$4.8 billion (NZ$7.2b) last year. 

There were deliveries of vehicles after nine months were down 18.7 per cent on the previous year; with September recording the first month of increase in vehicles for 2020. 

Bentley sales were up in the third quarter of 2020, compared to last year.  All of the rest of VW Group's brands including Porsche, Audi, SEAT, Skoda and Lamborghini were all down considerably, in some cases more than 30 per cent on the same period last year.  

However, sales of Audi in China bounced back strongly as did that country’s sales generally across all the VW brands. Porsche also reported an uptick in sales across Asia Pacific and the Middle East.

VW Group has been aggressively managing R&D spend and implementing cost measures, throughout 2020, to bring down the bottom line. VW sees increased competition into 2021 and will need to fight to retain market share, which grew 0.4 per cent in quarter 3 to 13 per cent globally in the third quarter.