BERLIN (dpa-AFX) - After lowering its sales forecast at the beginning of August, online used car dealer Auto1 has now also lowered its revenue target. Due to lower average sales prices, revenue in the current year will be lower than in 2022, according to the half-year report published in Berlin on Wednesday. Auto1 had previously expected earnings at the previous year's level of around 6.5 billion euros. For the experts surveyed by Bloomberg, however, the reduced sales forecast did not come as a surprise. On average, they had recently forecast sales of just under 5.9 billion euros for the current year.

Auto1 had already reduced its sales forecast and confirmed its gross profit target at the beginning of August when it presented its key data for the first half of the year. In addition, the company became somewhat more optimistic with regard to the operating loss. The Group has not yet specified a specific sales target.

The SDax-listed share has been under pressure since the announcement of the preliminary figures and the reduction in the sales forecast. Auto1's stock value has since plummeted by around a quarter to just under 1.6 billion euros.

Auto1 was one of the last spectacular Borsengangs in this country. On the first day of trading in February 2021, the share price shot up by almost half compared with the issue price of 38 euros to just under 57 euros - bringing the stock's value to around twelve billion euros. However, the share never cost more than that again. The euphoria quickly fizzled out and the share price plummeted to 5.41 euros in October 2022.

By the end of July, the stock had managed to crawl back up to the 10 euro mark, before the lowered sales target and the half-year figures caused prices to fall again. The details published in the annual report on Wednesday and the lowered sales forecast caused further losses. The share price slipped by up to almost three percent to 7.18 euros before recovering at least somewhat.

According to CEO and co-founder Christian Bertermann, the group has made progress in the first half of the year to finally reach the break-even point in day-to-day business. However, because investors are worried about the growth of the Internet platform in view of faltering sales, he had announced in the summer that he also wanted to invest more again in the future.

Following a significant drop in sales in the second quarter, Bertermann had lowered his sales forecast at the time. Thus, 625,000 cars plus or minus five percent should be sold. Previously, he had expected 625,000 to 690,000 cars. According to the lowered forecast, sales will only slightly exceed the previous year's figure of just under 650,000 in the best-case scenario - in the negative scenario, sales will be nine percent below the 2022 figure.

Boss Bertermann became somewhat more optimistic - or rather somewhat less pessimistic - in the summer when looking at the operating loss. Before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, and special items (adjusted for Ebitda), the loss for the full year is now expected to be between 50 and 70 million euros, well below the previous year's level of almost 166 million euros. The Berlin-based company had previously forecast an operating loss of 60 to 90 million euros.

In the first six months, the operating loss - as already known - was 40 million euros. In the first half of 2022, this was still a good 94 million euros. However, sales now fell by almost 16 percent to just under 2.9 billion euros. This figure was also published at the beginning of August. What is new, however, is the loss below the line: the loss attributable to the owners had fallen by just over 40 percent to around 78 million euros./zb/lew/mis