How FCA-PSA merger could fix problem areas

PSA Group CEO Carlos Tavares has said that both his company and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles are heading into their merger to create Stellantis in very good financial shape.

That is largely true, based on 2020 results, but one of the reasons for any merger is to address weaknesses. PSA and FCA have areas that need support.

They include:

• Poor performance in China, the world’s largest auto market
• Excess capacity in Fiat's European factories
• Fiat's struggle to comply with increasing tough European emissions rules
• PSA's over-reliance on Europe for profits
• Fiat's brand's years of underinvestment
• Reviving Maserati and Alfa Romeo

Under the late Sergio Marchionne, Alfa Romeo pinned its hopes on two stylish, sporty midsize models on the Giorgio platform: The Stelvio crossover and the Giulia sedan. But the two vehicles failed to challenge Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz in the premium segments, and a seven-model lineup plan released in June 2018 under Marchionne has been scaled back to just four.

Marchionne's plan called for annual sales of 400,000 by 2022; sales in 2019 were well below 100,000, as the Stelvio and Giulia sputtered in the U.S. market. 

Maserati, another brand with a storied racing and production car heritage, has struggled to meet sales targets that proved wildly optimistic. FCA’s 2014-18 business plan forecast sales would rise to 75,000 annually. Instead, they peaked at 48,700 before slipping to 35,000 in 2018. Sales in 2019 were around 19,300, a 46 percent decline. They fell a further 48 percent to 7,000 in the first half of 2020.

Losses have followed. Profit margins were negative in 2019 (minus 12 percent) and in the first half of 2020 (minus 40 percent), after a 13.8 percent operating margin in 2017 and 5.7 percent in 2018. 

In 2019, FCA CEO Mike Manley said Maserati was expected to continue to lose money until a wave of new and revised product launches in the next three years took effect. That plan has since been clarified: Maserati will invest more than 2.5 billion euros ($2.96 billion) to launch a total of 13 new models and derivatives by 2025, with a goal of raising sales to 75,000 a year; Manley said in September that 2020 will be the last year that Maserati loses money. 

Two decades ago, the Fiat brand competed with Ford, Peugeot, Renault and Volkswagen for the top sales position in Europe. But years of underinvestment in new products and the brand's exit from the key small-car segment have caused Fiat's sales to plummet. Premium brands Mercedes, BMW and Audi now sell more cars in Europe than Fiat, as do Skoda and Toyota. In 2019, Fiat sold about 660,000 cars in the EU and EFTA markets, according to industry association ACEA, while VW brand, the market leader, sold 1.8 million.

Overall Fiat has lost about 1 million units in volume globally from its most recent peak of 2.25 million sales in 2009. 

Fiat's passenger car range has shrunk to five nameplates: the 500 and Panda minicars, the 500X small crossover, the 500L small minivan and the Tipo compact range including a sedan, hatchback and station wagon. The youngest model is the Tipo, built in Turkey and launched in Europe at the end of 2015. The two most popular models in Europe, the 500 and Panda minicars, were launched in 2007 and 2012, respectively.

FCA has been struggling for years with overcapacity in Europe. A recent report by Arndt Ellinghorst, an automotive analyst at Bernstein, forecast that in 2021 FCA's capacity utilization in Europe will be less than 50 percent, with utilization at competitors in the 60 percent to 80 percent range.

The most underutilized plants are Fiat's factory in Kragujevac, Serbia, which builds the Fiat 500L; the Cassino plant in Italy, where all Alfa Romeos are built; and the Grugliasco plant, which produces the Maserati Ghibli and Quattroporte sedans.

PSA's production issues are focused on Vauxhall plants in Ellesmere Port and Luton, England, where a no-deal Brexit could mean extra tariffs.

According to LMC Automotive, Stellantis would have production capacity of 14 million vehicles. But the utilization rate would be just 58 percent, meaning an extra 6 million units, LMC said. On top of that, production lost because of the coronavirus pandemic is not expected to be recovered until the mid-2020s, LMC analysts have said.

FCA has entered into an EU CO2 emissions pooling agreement with Tesla at a cost of hundreds of millions of euros to share sales results for compliance. Manley has described the pooling arrangement as a "bridge" until the automaker releases a critical mass of electrified models. Among new and coming models are the Jeep Renegade and Compass plug-in hybrids, and the Fiat New 500 battery-electric vehicle.

Because of the low average mass of its vehicles in Europe, FCA faces a particularly tough CO2 target, around 92 grams per km, compared with the overall fleet average of 95 g/km.

More launches are planned in the next two years. PSA is expected to comfortably meet its emissions targets and it has a range of electrified vehicles in the most popular segments, and is working to vertically integrate the electric vehicle supply chain, from battery cells to electric motors to associated components.

More than 75 percent of PSA's profits came from Europe in 2019, a figure that has grown sharply as its business in China declined and the automaker added Germany's Opel and the UK's Vauxhall to its balance sheet. That has not been a problem recently, but Tavares has repeatedly warned that PSA needs to internationalize as a hedge against risk.

The latest midterm plans call for a gradual international expansion, but over a 5-10-year time frame: Opel will move into Russia; Citroen will add low-cost cars in India; and Peugeot will re-enter the U.S. market.

Conversely, almost all of FCA's profits are from North America, largely from the Jeep and Ram brands. 

This issue will largely be solved structurally by the creation of Stellantis, but Tavares and his team may need to reconsider which brands can be successful outside of their core regions, and allocate investment appropriately.

Tavares has said repeatedly that as a global company, PSA needs to be a player in China, which dwarfs all other markets by size. But volumes have fallen off a cliff since 2014, from more than 700,000 to far below 100,000 this year, and PSA dissolved one of its two joint ventures last year.

It’s unclear what can be done to stop the red ink at this point, as the mass market is increasingly dominated by Chinese domestic manufacturers, and premium buyers have been unconvinced by the DS brand. Tavares, however, has said that he thinks the merger with FCA will offer the chance for a fresh start.

FCA has faced similar difficulties: Sales in China were down to 92,000 in 2019 from 163,000 in 2018; of these, 73,000 units were Jeeps assembled in China by a joint venture with GAC Motor. The latter builds gasoline and plug-in hybrid variants of the Jeep Grand Commander as well as the gasoline versions of the Renegade, Compass and Cherokee.

Sales in September fell 36 percent from a year earlier to 3,862, with year-to-date volume plummeting 47 percent to 27,675, according to GAC. 

FCA also sells Jeep Wranglers and Grand Cherokees, Alfa Romeos and Maseratis in China. In 2019, Maserati sold 24 percent of its cars there.

Andrea Malan contributed to this report