Three of Ireland’s big car dealers enjoyed boosts to their bottom lines last year, including the company behind the main Mercedes-Benz distributor here, which paid out a €1.87 million dividend.
MHL Holdings, controlled by the O’Flaherty family, paid out its second successive dividend having previously gone two years without one. This year’s payout exceeded last year’s by more than €100,000.
The group has its roots in a company founded by Irish businessman Stephen O’Flaherty, grandfather of the current generation that owns the business. He built the group in the 1950s after securing the franchise for Ireland and Britain for Volkswagen.
The group also distributes vehicles for Chinese electric giant BYD, as well as for Chinese auto firm XPeng. MDL is no longer a distributor of Volkswagen. It also owns a network of retail garages under its Motor Solutions unit.
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Accounts filed by the group with the Companies Registration Office on Friday show it generated turnover of €429 million in 2024, which was up just over 3 per cent on the previous year when it turned over €415.2 million.
About half that increase was eaten up by a rise in the group’s cost of sales from €357.5 million to €364.9 million, while much of the rest was taken up with “other operating expenses”, which rose from €36.8 million to €42.2 million.
As a result, the group’s profit for the financial year rose just marginally from €21 million to €22.8 million.
The group owns a wide network of motor dealerships, as well as investment properties valued at €39.5 million. The firm booked a gain of €1.2 million from the revaluation of an investment property it owns during the year.
The company said the diversity of its business with its motor distribution, motor retail, and commercial investment property activities leave it “well positioned for future growth opportunities”.
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Meanwhile, Volvo Car Ireland paid out a dividend of €500,000 as turnover increased 5 per cent to €112.3 million and profit jumped 45 per cent to €779,416. It paid a dividend of €480,000 in 2023.
Last year’s performance came despite a drop in the group’s market share from 1.74 per cent to 1.48 per cent as it grappled with a fall-off in the popularity of electric vehicles.
“The challenges of the year surrounded a shift in consumer sentiment towards electric vehicles, which had been enjoying year-on-year growth leading into 2024 but for which we saw a [downward] shift of 23.6 per cent,” the company said.
Volvo Ireland saw a reduction of vehicle registrations from 2,133 to 1,792 as a result, which was close to its performance in 2022. “We were unable to fully compensate the volume of electric registrations lost,” it said.
Elsewhere, Nissan Ireland, which sells Nissan, Renault, and Dacia motor vehicles, turned a loss of €4.9 million in 2023 to a profit of €1.2 million last year. No dividend was recommended.
Turnover was up 40 per cent from €471.7 million to €659.7 million, while the cost of sales also increased substantially from €416.6 million to €579.2 million. It had to pay interest of €13.2 million on bank loans, which was up from €7.9 million the year before.
The group had net current liabilities of €2.9 million as against net current assets of €2.9 million the year before due to a breach of Windsor Motors annual covenants, which required its AIB term debt to be classified as a current liability.
