Holden posts $157 million profit for 2017

GM HOLDEN has recorded an after-tax profit of $156.8 million for 2017 – its final year of Australian vehicle manufacturing – which represents a $4m increase over 2016.

 

Holden shut its manufacturing plant in Elizabeth, South Australia, in October last year – the Port Melbourne engine plant closed in 2016 – and has since transitioned to a full-line importer operation.

 

Arch-rival Ford Australia, which shut its manufacturing operations a year earlier in October 2016, also posted an operating profit of $27 million last year, returning to the black for the first time since 2010.

 

In its financial results, Holden reported consolidated revenue from continuing operations of $1.8 billion, which was down on the $2.3b from 2016.

 

Holden made a total of $35.6 million from the sale of various properties, manufacturing plants and manufacturing equipment last year.

 

The results also show that in 2017 Holden received $36.6 million from the federal government as part of the Automotive Transformation Scheme (ATS), which is much less than the $51.4m it received in 2016. 

 

Holden also invested $70.7 million into research and development last year, a slight increase over 2016. 

 

It is unclear how much revenue came from GM Design Australia and the local engineering arm’s development work on global GM model programs.

 

In its final year as a manufacturer, Holden sold 90,283 vehicles in Australia, which represented a 4.2 per cent downturn over 2016, resulting in its lowest ever market share of 7.6 per cent.

 

According to official VFACTS figures, Holden sold 28,681 Australian-built cars in 2017, including 388 units of the Cruze (which ended production in October 2016), 551 sales of the long-wheelbase Caprice, 4241 Holden Utes and 23,676 Commodores.

 

The remuneration for Holden’s highest-ranking executives increased last year to $8.2 million, up from $6.7m in 2016.

 

Holden said in the report that it paid a total of $22 million in combined taxes last year, well down on the $80m it paid in 2016.

 

In the financial report, Holden makes mention of the federal government-mandated compulsory Takata airbag recall that it says will cost the company up to $53 million.

 

While this will be reflected in the 2018 financial year results, the company also states that “a portion” of the costs will be “charged back to the original General Motors manufacturing entities”.

 

This means that Holden could charge the various manufacturing bases for some of the cost of the recall. Holden vehicles are sourced from GM in the United States, GM Korea, Thailand and Opel in Europe, which is now owned by PSA Group.

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