Stay informed with free updates
Simply sign up to the Automobiles myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.
Ferrari has halved its target for electric vehicle production and set out disappointing profit guidance for 2030, sending shares in the luxury-car maker down by 15 per cent.
The Italian company said on Thursday it now aimed to make 20 per cent of its models fully electric by 2030, down from a 40 per cent goal announced three years ago.
In addition to slashing its EV target, Ferrari forecast its adjusted operating profit would rise from €2.1bn this year to €2.75bn by 2030, below investors’ expectations of €3.2bn.
Ferrari said that revenues would climb from €7.1bn in 2025 to €9bn in five years, below the €10bn forecast by analysts.
The company’s Milan-listed shares tumbled as much as 15 per cent to €357.
It also unveiled core technologies behind its first electric sports car, which it said would come with a “roomy” space, high-performing batteries and an electric engine with a distinctive sound.
“As a market leader, we need to make sure that we are able to offer our clients the same driving thrills when they use the ICE [internal combustion engine] or the hybrid or the electric,” chief executive Benedetto Vigna told the Financial Times.
Under its revised plans, 40 per cent of its cars will still be powered by the internal combustion engine by the end of the decade, with another 40 per cent powered by hybrid technology.
For the first half of the year, 53 per cent of its total shipments were petrol models, while the rest were hybrids.
“In a time of uncertainty, there is only one thing that can help you and that is agility,” Vigna said. “There is no other recipe.”
Investors had been eagerly awaiting the launch of the Ferrari Elettrica, which will be delivered from late next year.
The chassis of the new electric model, which will be made with recycled aluminium, will have an extremely short wheelbase, while the battery will have an energy density of almost 195 watt-hours per kilogramme, according to the company.
Vigna acknowledged some limitations of current EV and battery technology, however, as he explained the company’s decision not to make its first electric model a supercar.
“You cannot make a Ferrari supercar with the electric technology that there is today,” he said.
European carmakers have called on Brussels to loosen its ban from 2035 on the sale of combustion engine vehicles as the industry grapples with higher tariffs in the US and the influx of affordable EVs and hybrids from Chinese rivals.
Since its blockbuster listing in New York in 2015, Ferrari has increased operating profit fourfold and nearly doubled its shipments, consistently beating its midterm targets.
Analysts said the record had already sparked fears over whether the company could sustain it.
Tom Narayan, analyst at RBC Capital Markets, said Ferrari had probably chosen to make its new targets more conservative but that “investors are likely to interpret a downshift in EBIT growth from prior history”.
So far, it has outperformed the industry with a near 30 per cent operating profit margin on the back of an increase in buyers adding expensive features to their supercars. So-called personalisation now accounts for about 20 per cent of its annual revenue, although analysts have warned of declining residual values of highly customisable models.
The group has also been able to consistently raise its pricing for successor models and was the first to announce plans in March that it would increase prices for some of its models to counter the US tariffs.
Vigna reassured investors that Ferrari would continue to deliver on its financial targets. But he cautioned that they should not expect “a continuous drift” of higher prices over the next five years even as the company laid out plans to launch an average of four new cars a year.
“We need to preserve the scarcity of what we do. We want to offer models that are limited in volume but have a bigger variety of models,” he said. “The brand strength is not a shield that is there and lasts forever.”