Volvo Car Group’s Operating Profit Increased By 62 Percent

The operating margin rose from 3.5 percent in the third quarter of 2015 to 5 percent in 2016. For the first nine months of this year, the operating profit was SEK 7.66 billion to a full year operating profit for the whole of 2015 of SEK 6.6 billion.

Håkan Samuelsson, President and Chief Executive of Volvo said, "With nine months of the year completed, I can state with confidence that Volvo Cars is on track for another record year in terms of sales and that operating profit for the year is expected to improve substantially."

The company's best-selling cars in the third quarter were two lifestyle cars; the XC60 SUV and V40 hatchback, with a sale of 38,000 and 23,000 respectively. The third spot was claimed by the new XC90 SUV with sales of 22,000. For the first nine months of this year, the XC90 sales hit 66,000.

The company is growing in terms of sale and profitability and it is also adding new cars to the product lineup. Another important development in the third quarter was Volvo cars' move to entrench its position as the leader in autonomous driving by forging two important alliances.

The first alliance was with Uber. Volvo became the first automaker to work with Uber to develop driverless base cars. "It is highly significant that of all the car companies in the world, Uber joined forces with Volvo Cars," said Mr Samuelsson.

The second alliance was with Autoliv, a Swedish automotive safety technology company. The main aim is to develop and sell software for autonomous driving cars.

"Volvo Cars will no longer be purely a car maker but increasingly a software developer responding to important technological changes in the automotive industry," said Mr Samuelsson.