VW Posts €5.82 Billion Q3 Loss as Restructuring Stalls
October 29, 2026 · Frisian News
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Volkswagen reported an after-tax loss of €5.82 billion for July to September 2026, more than five times the year-earlier figure. A €6.4 billion Porsche writedown, a 38.5 percent collapse in China deliveries, and a growing share of low-margin electric vehicles all contributed.
Volkswagen posted an after-tax group loss of €5.82 billion for July to September 2026, the company announced on Thursday. That figure is more than five times the €1.07 billion loss it recorded in the same quarter a year earlier.
The Sueddeutsche Zeitung described VW as Europe's largest car group. Its numbers now show a business whose own management had already lost confidence in its targets. CEO Oliver Blume and CFO Arno Antlitz cut the full-year profit forecast in mid-September, according to nius.de. The operating margin for 2026 is now expected to reach at most 1 percent of revenue. The company had originally forecast a return of between 4.0 and 5.5 percent.
The quarter included €7.8 billion in special effects, according to company figures cited by nius.de and presse-augsburg.de. The largest single item was a €6.4 billion goodwill writedown on Porsche, VW's Stuttgart-based sports-car subsidiary. The writedown is non-cash, so no money left the company, but it crushed the operating result. VW cited lower expectations for Porsche's future earnings as the reason, and noted the Stuttgart brand had already contributed to a quarterly loss twelve months earlier.
Revenue fell 6.3 percent to €75.28 billion in the third quarter, per the same sources. Deliveries dropped 14.3 percent year on year to 1.89 million vehicles between July and September. Across the first nine months of 2026, the group delivered just over 6 million vehicles, around 600,000 fewer than in the same period of 2025, a decline of 9 percent.
China is where the pressure cuts deepest. VW delivered just under 406,000 vehicles there in the third quarter, a fall of 38.5 percent compared with the prior year, according to nius.de. The group cited a difficult market environment and growing price and competitive pressure.
A rising share of electric vehicles made things worse. According to nius.de, VW said a higher proportion of lower-margin battery-electric cars weighed on earnings across the group.
The full-year picture is grim. An operating margin of at most 1 percent compares with 2.8 percent in 2025 and the 4.0-to-5.5-percent target set at the start of the year, according to nius.de. Revenue for 2026 is now projected at around €315 billion, against €321.9 billion in 2025. VW had initially forecast growth of up to 3 percent. It now expects revenue to be flat at best and down by as much as 3 percent at worst.
The forecasts were cut in September. The results confirm the cut was not pessimistic enough.
Published October 29, 2026 · Frisian News