PHOTO: Volkswagen has reported a third-quarter operating loss of 3.48 billion euros.
German auto giant Volkswagen has posted its first quarterly loss in 15 years in the wake of the global pollution-cheating scandal which also forced it to lower its full-year forecasts.
Volkswagen said provisions related to its admission that it fitted 11 million diesel vehicles worldwide with sophisticated software to skew emissions tests pushed it deeply into the red in the period from July to September.
The group also warned of further "considerable financial charges" related to legal proceedings over the scam, over which it is the subject of criminal probes in the United States and Germany.
Volkswagen, which has just been overtaken by Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker in terms of sales, ran up a net loss of 1.673 billion euros ($2.52 billion) in the three-month period, compared with a profit of 2.971 billion euros a year earlier.
The losses were due to a charge of 6.7 billion euros ($10 billion) Volkswagen took to cover the initial costs of the scandal, primarily a recall of all vehicles fitted with the software scheduled to begin in January 2016.
Excluding that provision, operating profit would have remained stable at 3.2 billion euros in the three-month period, the company said.
Third-quarter sales revenues, or turnover, advanced by 5.3 per cent to 51.487 billion euros, while deliveries to customers fell by 3.4 per cent to 2.392 million vehicles worldwide.
"The figures show the core strength of the Volkswagen group on the one hand, while on the other the initial impact of the current situation is becoming clear," said Matthias Mueller, who was appointed chief executive shortly after the scandal broke to steer Voklswagen out of its biggest-ever crisis.
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