Volkswagen's China Bet Meets a Hannover Showdown as the Stock Clings to €69.20

VW meets IG Metall in Hannover as profit guidance collapses to 1% margin, €10bn charges bite, and the stock sits near its 52-week low.

Volkswagen has spent the past two weeks absorbing one body blow after another, and on Wednesday the Wolfsburg giant faces the one confrontation it can least afford. Management, the works council and IG Metall will sit down in Hannover for a review of the 2024 future collective agreement — a meeting that arrives with the company's profit guidance in tatters and its share price hovering near a 52-week low.

The timing could hardly be worse. On Tuesday, IG Metall's bargaining committee unanimously backed a demand for 5% higher pay over a twelve-month term, a claim covering roughly 130,000 employees. For a group that just slashed its full-year operating margin forecast to a maximum of 1% — down from an earlier target of 4.0% to 5.5% — the union's opening bid lands like a grenade in a powder keg.

A €10 Billion Hole With Several Sources

The special charges weighing on this year's earnings total around €10 billion, and they stem from a tangle of problems rather than a single misstep. Multi-billion-euro write-downs on Porsche AG sit alongside provisions for early-retirement programmes and the planned sale of the Osnabrück plant. Impairments on fully consolidated Chinese subsidiaries add another layer of pain.

Those charges form the backdrop to the Supervisory Board's approval of the "Zukunftsplan 2030," a restructuring blueprint that envisions cutting as many as 100,000 jobs and carries restructuring costs of up to €10 billion. To fund that overhaul and rebuild margins, management needs meaningful relief on personnel costs. A simultaneous push for higher wages sets two irreconcilable objectives on a collision course.

The compressed margin leaves the executive team with almost no room to make material concessions without undermining its own recovery targets. Investors will therefore be watching closely whether management and the Supervisory Board — where Marianne Heiß has chaired the audit committee since the start of September — can hold the line on cost discipline, or whether the restructuring gets watered down through expensive compromises.

The China Card

Far from Wolfsburg, Volkswagen is simultaneously trying to prove it can still win in the world's most important single market. Pre-sales opened this week for the ID. Unyx 09, an electric fastback sedan developed with Chinese partner Xpeng in roughly 24 months. Series production began on 24 September, with the market launch set for late October.

The numbers are aggressive. The rear-wheel-drive version, producing 230 kW, starts at 199,900 Yuan, while an all-wheel-drive variant adding a 140-kW front motor begins at 249,900 Yuan. The five-metre-plus sedan packs a CATL lithium iron phosphate battery with just under 92 kWh of capacity, delivering up to 755 kilometres of range on China's CLTC cycle. It also marks the first use of 5C charging technology on the group's core brand, promising a 10-to-80% top-up in under twelve minutes at compatible stations.

The stakes are plain. According to research by Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, the market share of German automakers in China slid from 22.2% in 2023 to 16.4% in 2025. Whether new models like the ID. Unyx 09 can reverse that trend is a central question for the broader turnaround.

Factories Under Review, a Recall in the Workshop

At home, the pressure on production capacity keeps intensifying. The Supervisory Board is deliberating far-reaching savings programmes, and German media report that plants including Hannover, Emden, Zwickau and Neckarsulm are under review. Der Spiegel reported that vehicle manufacturing at affected sites could be phased out gradually through the end of 2034. VDA president Hildegard Müller weighed in, arguing that existing German factories are not viable in their current form and must be opened up to foreign producers.

Operational setbacks are compounding the strain. On Tuesday, Volkswagen and Audi called back nearly 2.86 million vehicles worldwide because a mounting screw on the steering gear can corrode and, in the worst case, cause a loss of steering ability. Core models including the Golf, the Tiguan and the Audi Q3 are affected. Media reports on Wednesday suggested suitable replacement screws may not be available in sufficient quantities, meaning alternative parts would be fitted first — and affected owners would have to return to the workshop a second time. Such logistical friction ties up management capacity, drives additional costs and erodes brand trust at a delicate moment.

What the Chart Is Saying

For the share price, the immediate question is whether the stock can defend its recent floor. As long as support at the 52-week low of €69.20 holds, the scenario of a base forming at a reduced level remains intact. The Volkswagen preference share closed Friday's session at €71.90. A break below that support would signal an immediate continuation of the slide — the stock is already down 31% since the start of the year — and would suggest the market has, for now, stopped believing in management's recovery plan.

Wednesday's review meeting in Hannover is the next concrete catalyst. Its outcome will show whether the group can execute its future plan in an orderly fashion, or whether Volkswagen is heading into a grinding stalemate with its workforce.