Financially, things are looking up for Volkswagen Group overall, yet deliveries are still falling in the Americas. Worldwide, the automotive giant's profits after taxes rose 26.8 percent in the first quarter of 2014 to 2.47 billion euros ($3.4 billion). Total sales revenue was up 2.7 percent to 47.8 billion euro ($66 billion).
Worldwide, across all of VW Group's brands, excluding its Chinese joint ventures, sales were up 7.9 percent to 2.56 million units and production was up 7.4 percent to 2.565 million vehicles. Deliveries were up 7.4 percent in Europe and 13.7 percent in the Asia-Pacific region. China is an absolutely massive market for the company now, with 879,898 cars delivered in the first three months of the year alone, up 14.5 percent.
While VW Group is doing quite well in some regions around the world, things in North and South America are not so rosy. North American deliveries fell 4.4 percent to 194,606 units and market share fell to 4.5 percent, compared to 4.8 percent in Q1 of last year. US deliveries were down 6.5 percent to 133,481 vehicles compared to last year, and Canada fell even further, down 8.4 percent to 16,694 vehicles. However, Mexico was up 4.2 percent, with a total of 44,431 sold. South America also fell 22.4 percent to 141,589.
Overall, the VW Group's biggest profit drivers weren't vehicles from its namesake division. Rather, luxury marques Audi and Porsche carried the day for the conglomerate, with the Four-Ring brand contributing 1.3 billion euros ($1.8B) to the coffers and the House of Stuttgart chipped in a further 698 million euro ($964M).
Volkswagen predicts an increase in deliveries by the end of the year and a three-percent increase in sales revenue, which it appears to be on track for.
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