CORRECTION/Sixt: Rental cars remain scarce and expensive

(Corrected in the last paragraph: Vehicle fleet a third more than last year)

PULLACH (dpa-AFX) – After the best start to the year in its company history, the car rental company Sixt (Sixt SE St) is expecting strong summer business with high rental car prices. In the first summer without corona travel restrictions, the availability of vehicles will “certainly be a challenge”, said Chief Financial Officer Kai Andrejewski in Pullach on Thursday. “We expect the current price level to stabilize.” Since new cars are likely to remain scarce until 2023, Sixt is now holding vehicles for up to 12 months and has added other brands to the fleet.

In the first quarter, sales rose to 581 million euros – an increase of 15 percent compared to the pre-Corona year 2019. Profit before tax even doubled to 93.5 million euros. In addition to high prices, the main driver was growth in the USA. Sixt is now represented at 28 of the 30 largest airports and generates a third of its sales in the USA.

In other European countries, sales increased by 22 percent to 213 million euros compared to the first quarter of 2019. In Germany, it was 18 percent lower at 181 million euros. The bottom line is that Sixt now has a quarterly profit of EUR 66 million after taxes, after a loss in the same quarter of the previous year.

The car rental company expects “high demand in all markets” by the fall and has confirmed its forecast for the year: sales are expected to “increase significantly” compared to the 2.3 billion euros of the previous year. Profit before tax is said to be between 380 and 480 million euros, after a record profit of 442 million last year. The recent hacker attack on the IT did not have any significant impact on the result, said Andreyevsky.

At 125,000 vehicles, the fleet size in the first quarter was a third higher than in the previous year, but still slightly below the pre-corona figures. In addition to the procurement of vehicles due to the shortage of chips and production restrictions, Sixt also sees risks for further business development from rising inflation. On the other hand, the Chief Financial Officer sees the company as well-armed against interest rate increases: the current loan agreements still have a good two years to run and the equity ratio is very high./rol/DP/jha