Aston Martin to cut up to 20% of staff as turnaround stalls

Published Wed, Feb 25, 2026 · 04:56 PM

[LONDON] Aston Martin Lagonda Global Holdings will cut as much as a fifth of its roughly 3,000 workforce, as the ailing luxury-car maker grapples with an elusive turnaround made harder by US President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

The British company expects savings of around £40 million (S$68.1 million) from the reductions, with related costs of about £15 million, it said on Wednesday (Feb 25). The latest planned cuts are deeper than the previous round a year ago, when the carmaker was looking to axe 5 per cent of staff.

Aston Martin shares rose as much as 5 per cent in early Wednesday trading in London. The stock has lost nearly half its value in the past year.

It comes as Aston Martin slumped to a £493 million total loss last year and said it only expects free cash outflow to improve, not turn positive in 2026. Generating positive free cash flow has been a key target for the company.

The automaker known for its links to James Bond is seeking to end years of losses and slash its large debt pile. But a turnaround effort under billionaire Lawrence Stroll – who rescued the company in 2020 – has been derailed by product delays, problems with quality, higher tariffs in the US, its largest market, as well as a slowdown in China.

Those challenges have contributed to three profit warnings in the past year, the most recent of which came on Friday. In response, chief executive officer Adrian Hallmark is seeking to cut costs.

“I don’t want to blame Donald Trump for all of our woes but he was certainly a big part of the problem that we faced last year,” Hallmark said in an interview, without quantifying the tariff hit. “We set off to get to that break-even point in 2025 – we missed it by quite a margin.”

Revenue fell 21 per cent last year to £1.26 billion. Deliveries in 2026 will be similar to last year’s 5,448 units, the company said.

Aston Martin expects a better financial performance this year from more deliveries of the pricier Valhalla hybrid supercar that will help boost the average selling price of its models. That dropped 15 per cent to £209,000 in 2025.

Since Stroll arrived in 2020, the carmaker has required repeated capital raises to ease the debt burden. Aston Martin ended the year with net debt of £1.38 billion and £250 million of cash.

Raising more cash this year is “not the plan,” chief financial officer Doug Lafferty said. That’s helped by a £50 million deal announced on Friday to sell the Aston Martin naming rights beyond 2055 to the Formula One team separately controlled by Stroll, he said. BLOOMBERG