Aston Martin Buyers Should Check Under the Hood
The luxury carmaker’s accounts benefit from not expensing much R&D.
Flight of the Valkyries.
Photographer: Martyn Lucy/Getty Images EuropeThe serially loss-making Aston Martin Holdings Ltd. is purring again. At least, that's the conclusion you might draw from the few financial figures the luxury carmaker hands out to journalists each quarter.2875
Revenue jumped by half last year thanks to swish new models such as the DB11. The private-equity and Kuwaiti-owned company’s 87 million pounds ($116 million) of reported pretax profit, plus positive free cash flow, will have whetted the appetite of investors ahead of a possible IPO later this year. While first-quarter earnings, published on Monday, were a little less high-octane because of planned model changeovers, the British manufacturer said it still eked out a small profit.