Forbes has recently (April 17, 2013) revealed the top 10 of the world’s most profitable car brands. This ranking was assigned based on sales, profits, assets, and market value. According to Forbes, these companies have a combined $38 trillion in revenues, $2.43 trillion in profits, $159 trillion in assets, and $39 trillion in market value. They also employ about 87 million people.
You can check these top 10 auto companies in the world by Forbes 2013 here.
There are some interesting facts about this ranking. First, it was a bit difficult to me to believe that top 10thcar company is SAIC Motor (Chinese car company) as you can see below (figure 1). This is the only company in the top 10 that I have not heard of. I think it is one of the Chinese companies that is doing extremely well in China. It is also interesting that Forbes did not choose Toyota as the top one in the world. Volkswagen Group (Figure 2) was ranked as the top one auto company in the world.
As you can see on the right side, it is ranked number one with sales: $254 billion, profits: $28.6 billion, assets: $408.2 billion, and market value: $94.4 billion.
As the economy is recovering from recession, car companies will be able to make more profit.
If VW Group earned more profit than Toyota, what would be interesting is if Toyota were rated highest. According to the LA Times Toyota’s annual profits have more than tripled with recovering reputation after recalls and supply shortages, a fresh lineup, a weakening yen, and a general uptick in vehicle purchases to thank.
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/may/09/business/la-fi-autos-toyota-earnings-20130509
Toyota suffers from many of the problems of scale that plagued GM; poor profits are a sign of that. It’s hard to stay lean and mean when you think you are on top of the world.
VW is likely top in revenue and in profit, but not in unit volume — and VW has also had a few million fewer recalls the past 12 months.
As to SAIC, they are the primary joint venture partner in China of VW and GM, the two leading players in the world’s biggest market. However, almost all of their performance is due to their partners, to my knowledge their “house” brand fares poorly in both sales and profitability.
good post.
Thanks for your effort.