Aston Martin readies overhauled sports-car range

LONDON -- Aston Martin will reveal the first of its overhauled sports-car range at the end of this month, Chief Financial Officer Doug Lafferty said.

The automaker has promised to reveal new versions of its three core sports-car models – the DB11, Vantage and DBS – over the next 12 months. The company has not said which will be first, but the DB11 is the oldest model in its lineup.

Aston Martin will increase prices on all three cars as it looks to return to profitability with a margin target of 40 percent.

“All the next-generation sports cars carry that 40 percent target on gross margin and with that comes price increases,” Lafferty said on the company’s first-quarter earnings call.

Average pricing for Aston Martin’s cars stood at 213,000 pounds ($266,000) for the quarter, up from 201,000 pounds for 2022, company figures show.

Aston Martin made 1,269 wholesales (sales to dealers) for the period. The DBX SUV accounted for 669 cars, 59 percent of the total. More than 70 percent of DBX wholesales were for the 707-performance version, Lafferty said.

Aston Martin’s loss before tax for the three months to March 31 was 74.2 million pounds ($92.7 million), compared with 111.6 million pounds a year earlier.

Gross margin was 34 percent for the first quarter, compared to 36 percent for 2022, Aston Martin said.

Margins were impacted by around four million points of incremental costs of materials, logistics and manufacturing during the quarter, the automaker said.

Production has already begun of the first of the new sports cars with deliveries starting in the third quarter of the year, Lafferty said.

Investors will be shown Aston’s future model lineup including a new electric car at a capital markets day this summer, Chairman Lawrence Stroll said on an earnings call back in March.

"You will see the cars this summer that are going to take us through our combustion story, our hybrid story and take us through our plans for electrification," Stroll said on the call. "It will be a real clear vision of the journey I have been building for the last three years."

Stroll also hinted that Aston Martin would show a prototype of a mid-engine sports car that would sit below the Valhalla plug-in hybrid hypercar, which was unveiled in 2021 and is now expected in 2024 as a competitor to the 986-hp Ferrari Stradale SF90.