You are right, and fortunately, VW has realized it too. I believe that the significantly updated ID.3/ID.4 this year and the new ID. Polo, Skoda Epiq, Cupra Raval, and ID. Cross entering the market will show a bit of the future direction. Batteries from their own factory, a genuinely new platform. Next year, we will start seeing the ID. 1 (ID. Up?), which is designed in collaboration with Rivian, especially regarding the software. And the ID. Golf and ID. Tiguan, which might replace the ID.3/ID.4 entirely in 2027/2028?
I am pleased that VW is finally making genuinely big moves; until now, they have mostly been iterating on ideas that were already somewhat poor.
I own VW shares, about 5% of my portfolio. I plan to get rid of them. In this case too, I’ve managed to make the purchase price tolerable by averaging down. If it happens to rise to 110 euros (vow3.de), I would gladly sell. Surprises regarding this company are mostly negative. I’ve owned them for 3 years, and I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone. It’s just very difficult to make money with car companies and airlines. If they cut the dividend, it will collapse completely.
That new MEB+ platform and the interiors first introduced in the ID Cross are the most positive thing the entire VW Group has ever done with its electric vehicles. Linked to this MEB+ platform is also VW’s own technology produced in their own battery factories (one factory completed in December and two others under construction) under the PowerCo subsidiary.
I might personally pick up an MEB±updated ID.4 as a company car. We’ll see when the time comes.
For the first time, the efforts of the VW Group and European car manufacturers in electric vehicles feel positive. But much like OsinkoGuru suggested, I don’t know if I would invest in the automotive industry in general, even though I think the outlook for the EV side—especially for VW—is more positive.
I’m not recommending anything to anyone, but damn, by my own logic, this is at a buy price. According to my delusional calculations, the “real price” of this is around 200 euros. Right now, the share price is around 100 euros. My only small concern is the debt ratio, which is a bit high, but I don’t see Volkswagen being the first to go bankrupt. Plus, it pays a dividend. So, if the purchase goes south, it can just stay in the portfolio and keep paying dividends.
I bought this. It’s really hard to see this going wrong. As for risk management, I can just hold longer if the price happens to drop from here, and in my opinion, the outlook here is weighted towards a price increase, although if a market crash is coming, the headwind might have some impact, but that affects other stocks as well.
I also bought Volkswagen a few years back. The share price seemed really cheap even then. In the aftermath of the EV hype, the price had dropped to a very attractive level, and I just couldn’t understand the bargain pricing. Yet, the price remains at those same levels.
I am not making any recommendations either, but I believe Volkswagen will be a winner in the long run. The automotive industry is a marathon where large masses move slowly. Slow movement is hard to detect if you only look at your own backyard and focus on fast-moving variables. That’s what happened to the US when the Japanese automotive industry put them in their place. Japan failed at first but corrected its course effectively. The same goes for electric vehicles. The real competition is still in the qualifying stages, and the competitors are juniors. Some are child stars.
Edit: I must also mention the dividend payments and the occasional extras!
Just rambling my own speculations: Admittedly, I was a bit skeptical myself about the fact that this has specifically been cheap for a long time. Still, I couldn’t find a weak spot in it based on my own criteria. I was thinking that previously the low price existed because there was something in the financial statements that didn’t match the possibility of it taking off. At the moment, my speculative assessment is that the financial statements are in order, and once the Q4 info is released, it will start to rise
Additional signs of upward pressure come from the fact that since that price drop occurred, it has been flat since around the turn of the year 24/25. Well, the price has fluctuated, but around the same horizontal line.
But speculation is easy; maybe it’ll turn out that this is still in my portfolio at a loss ten years from now, because I don’t sell stocks at a loss
I was further confused by the fact that there were several different versions of this for sale, including that WOW3 version, which apparently had some special terms. Terms such as “the company can buy back the shares at a price of its choosing whenever it decides” or something like that.
Whenever there are these kinds of confusing peculiarities, a simple person like me tends to get their playbook a bit mixed up, and the risk of a mistake increases. I believe I bought the very basic version of this, so there’s that. It just brings to mind a case a while back when I thought a company was cheap, but then it turned out there were Class A and B shares, and the share counts were different, which somehow explained that what was thought to be cheap wasn’t cheap after all. I don’t remember exactly what it was.
So, a small question mark remained haunting me regarding the confusion of these multiple share options, but they had the same number of shares, at least when comparing the basic WOW and WOW3.
The next earnings report for this is listed for March 13, 2025 (which is funny in itself, since it’s 2026. I sent a message to Nordnet asking if it’s an error, and it likely is.). My opinion hasn’t changed, I wonder if I should load up before that earnings report… It’s just silly to pay trading fees multiple times, and of course, one shouldn’t put all their eggs in one basket. Let’s see, there’s still time to think it over.
Volkswagen AG is a semi-state-owned employment agency in Germany. It cannot be managed like a normal industrial company because public ownership and interests are so significant and trade unions are quite powerful. The same applies to many other automotive companies, at least in Europe. There is a reason why their valuations as an investment are so low. Personally, I have never touched them. Furthermore, the industry is fiercely competitive and the Chinese are breathing down their necks.
