Mercedes-Benz‘s retail profits have fallen by nearly a half in the last 12 months.
Pre-tax profits fell by 48.2 per cent to £9.03 million in the year up to December 2015, but turnover rose by 10.6 per cent to £1.92 billion.
The luxury car manufacturer‘s results were driven by a 6.2 per cent rise in new vehicle sales, reaching 28,242 units.
Despite a strong performance in new vehicle sales, Mercedes focused on used car sales in the same period with numbers up a healthy 19.6 per cent to 54,269 million.
The company said market conditions remained extremely competitive, though.
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In July this year the company sold of its Manchester and Birmingham businesses to Chinese company Lei Shing Hong. Pre-tax profits of these businesses reached £4.2 million for the same period.
“Over the past two years Mercedes-Benz globally has reviewed the option of having a higher representation of franchise retailers whilst still maintaining a sizeable number of sites directly owned by Mercedes-Benz,” the company said in a report accompanying its results.
“This is reflective of the positive developments of both Mercedes-Benz‘s directly owned sites and their franchise partners and is an approach which has been adopted in many other countries, including Germany.
“On 1 July 2016 the company sold the Birmingham and Manchester market areas. This transaction is expected to generate a profit of circa £49m.”
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