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Aston Martin will keep paying you to take their cars away
The 112-year-old marque that burns cash like an AI startup
A profit warning today from Aston Martin-Lagonda is as good an excuse as any to run the numbers on one of the London market’s most ridiculous companies. Here’s a chart:
Based on group free cash flow, each Aston Martin sold wholesale since 2014 has cost the company more than £45,000 on average. Assuming 62,000 Aston Martins delivered between 2014 and the end of the current year, that adds up to a £2.8bn customer subsidy.The subsidy’s been funded by new equity (nearly £2bn raised since IPO) and debt (more than £400mn of net issuance, meaning year-end net debt will be £1.3bn or nearly eight times Ebitda). It’s been a very expensive vanity project for Lawrence Stroll, whose consortium rescued Aston Martin from probable bankruptcy in 2020.The shares are down 96 per cent from the IPO (which raised no new money!), but that only tells half the story. There’s been an effective equity-to-debt swap since Stroll took control:And there’s more to come. JPMorgan, Aston Martin’s joint house broker, forecasts £360mn of cash burn in 2025 and a further £230mn in the first half of 2026.Seasonality is one of the many peculiar things about Aston Martin, with the company making the bulk of its sales in the second half. That means cash burn should ease by the end of 2026.Still, to keep the lights on in the meantime, Aston Martin may need to raise another £200mn, JPM says. It expects a cash call on similar terms to the previous two, which were done at a £2.3bn enterprise value.Another thing lacking, in addition to profit and cash flow, is a break-even target. Today’s profit warning came with a small cut to capex and a pledge to reduce sales and administration costs, but no guidance more specific than 2026 should be better than 2025.With a very concentrated ownership base and no big debt refinancings due before 2029, a route to profitability may be less of a concern to Aston Martin’s bosses than to independent shareholders.
Aston Martin will keep paying you to take their cars away
The 112-year-old marque that burns cash like an AI startup
Aston Martin will keep paying you to take their cars away
The 112-year-old marque that burns cash like an AI startup
A profit warning today from Aston Martin-Lagonda is as good an excuse as any to run the numbers on one of the London market’s most ridiculous companies. Here’s a chart:
Based on group free cash flow, each Aston Martin sold wholesale since 2014 has cost the company more than £45,000 on average. Assuming 62,000 Aston Martins delivered between 2014 and the end of the current year, that adds up to a £2.8bn customer subsidy.The subsidy’s been funded by new equity (nearly £2bn raised since IPO) and debt (more than £400mn of net issuance, meaning year-end net debt will be £1.3bn or nearly eight times Ebitda). It’s been a very expensive vanity project for Lawrence Stroll, whose consortium rescued Aston Martin from probable bankruptcy in 2020.The shares are down 96 per cent from the IPO (which raised no new money!), but that only tells half the story. There’s been an effective equity-to-debt swap since Stroll took control:And there’s more to come. JPMorgan, Aston Martin’s joint house broker, forecasts £360mn of cash burn in 2025 and a further £230mn in the first half of 2026.Seasonality is one of the many peculiar things about Aston Martin, with the company making the bulk of its sales in the second half. That means cash burn should ease by the end of 2026.Still, to keep the lights on in the meantime, Aston Martin may need to raise another £200mn, JPM says. It expects a cash call on similar terms to the previous two, which were done at a £2.3bn enterprise value.Another thing lacking, in addition to profit and cash flow, is a break-even target. Today’s profit warning came with a small cut to capex and a pledge to reduce sales and administration costs, but no guidance more specific than 2026 should be better than 2025.With a very concentrated ownership base and no big debt refinancings due before 2029, a route to profitability may be less of a concern to Aston Martin’s bosses than to independent shareholders.
