Stellantis continues to be dogged by logistic problems in Europe that are preventing the fast delivery of new cars to customers as production improves.
The company flagged up the problem on its latest earnings call as being one of the few drags on sales growth amid increased revenues in the first three months of the year.
“In Europe, the real issue continues to be outbound logistics,” outgoing chief financial officer Richard Palmer told analysts. “That’s still top of our list of our things to resolve.”
The problem is continuing to shrink the market share of Stellantis brands in Europe – including Citroën, Fiat and Peugeot – as rivals take advantage of the improving supply-chain situation to ship greater numbers of cars.
Stellantis sales grew 9.7% in the first three months of the year, compared with overall market growth of 24.4%, according to figures from the European automotive industry lobby group the ACEA.
Peugeot’s first-quarter market share across the region was 5.6%, down from 5.9% the same period the year before; Opel-Vauxhall’s fell to 3.6% from 4.0%; and Fiat’s declined to 3.2% from 3.5%.
Overall, Stellantis’s share in Europe dropped to 17.8% from 19.9%, while that of rival Volkswagen Group rose to 25.3% from 23.9% during the same period.
“We still have a strong portfolio of orders, and our challenge continues to be fulfilling those orders,” Palmer said. “We’ve moved slower compared to the competition, so that’s hurting our share.”
The issue of finding transport to move cars from factories to dealers has been affecting Stellantis’s European deliveries for almost six months.
CEO Carlos Tavares promised in March that the company’s logistical issues deliveries would be sorted by the end of the month. “We have understood where the outbound logistics issues were. We are addressing them. They are multiple,” Tavares told analysts.
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