Interesting and Electrifying Days at Ferrari

Ferrari makes fewer cars in a year than Toyota produces in a day and a half, yet the brand's financials are the envy of auto industry bean counters the world over. The average operating margin of automakers last year was about 4.7 percent; Toyota's was 13.3 percent. Ferrari's? It recorded a staggering 28.3 percent operating margin on revenues of $7.8 billion. Bottom line: Ferrari makes a lot more money on every new vehicle it sells than any other automaker.

- Angus Mackenzie

In the 10 years since Sergio Marchionne engineered the storied Italian marque's IPO, Ferrari spent almost $7.8 billion on new products and manufacturing facilities, launching 14 new models, filing 883 patents, doubling its workforce to almost 6,000 people, and increasing sales 78 percent to more than 13,700 cars per year. Today, Ferrari's order book is full into 2027, revenues are predicted to grow to $10.5 billion within five years, and the company plans to spend $4.4 billion on new models into the 2030s.

"Ferrari is a stronger company [than ever before]," CEO Benedetto Vigna said of its decade as a publicly listed entity at the recent Ferrari Capital Markets Day in Maranello, Italy. But even as Vigna closed the near three-hour presentation and Q&A session, screens among the audience of investors, analysts, and journalists were lighting up with the news Ferrari's stock price had plunged 15 percent. More than $16 billion had been wiped off the company's value. Overnight.