Stellantis swung from a big loss to profit, and the US did almost all the work
One region recovered, the other is still in the red
A year ago Stellantis was posting a 2.2 billion euro half-year loss and looked like a company in real trouble. Six months on, it is back in the black with a 670 million euro profit. That is a genuine recovery, and the numbers are strong, but read the regional split and the celebration cools quickly, because almost all of the turnaround came from North America while Europe is still losing money.
The headline numbers
The top line is genuinely healthy. Stellantis reported half-year net profit of 670 million euro, against a 2.2 billion euro loss in the same period of 2025, on revenue of 81.6 billion euro, up 10 percent. Deliveries rose 11 percent to around 3 million vehicles, and adjusted operating profit came in at 1.73 billion euro at a 2.1 percent margin, up from 540 million euro a year ago. After a punishing 2025, this is the clear sign of a business steadying itself.
North America did the heavy lifting
Almost all of the good news comes from one place. North American revenue rose 21 percent to 34.3 billion euro, and the region swung to a 547 million euro operating profit from a 982 million euro loss a year earlier, with second-quarter revenue up a striking 32 percent. The drivers are new and refreshed product: the Ram 1500 with the Hemi V8 brought back, the Jeep Grand Wagoneer and the Chrysler Pacifica. Give American buyers the big, characterful vehicles they want and they respond, which is exactly what happened.
Europe is still the problem
Then there is home. European revenue grew just 1 percent to 30.8 billion euro, and the region posted an operating loss of 86 million euro. Higher sales volume was cancelled out by weaker pricing power and higher raw-material costs, the classic squeeze of a mature, fiercely competitive market. There are bright spots, with the Fiat Grande Panda, Citroen C3 Aircross and Opel Frontera all selling well, but a loss is a loss, and Europe is where most of Stellantis's brands live.
The tariff overhang
There is a catch even in the good news. Stellantis estimates a full-year US tariff headwind of 1 to 1.2 billion euro, partly offset in the first half by a refund. The uncomfortable truth is that the region carrying the recovery is also the one most exposed to trade policy, so a strategy leaning on North America is a strategy leaning on a variable that Washington controls, not Stellantis.
Why it matters here
For a Belgian reader this is not abstract. Stellantis brands, Peugeot, Opel, Citroen and Fiat, are among the best-selling cars in Belgium and across Europe, so a group that makes money in America but loses it here is a pointed problem for exactly the cars people on this side of the Atlantic actually buy. CEO Antonio Filosa framed the quarter as continued progress led by North America, with the FaSTLAne 2030 strategy on track, but the European hole is the part that will decide how solid this recovery really is.
AutoNext Take
This is a real recovery and it should be treated as one. Swinging from a 2.2 billion euro loss to a profit in a year is not luck, and the North American product offensive, led by giving Ram its V8 back, shows Stellantis can still read a market and respond. The cork can come off the bottle in the United States. But you would keep the prosecco corked for Europe, because a group that earns in dollars and bleeds in euros has not actually fixed its core problem, it has found a region to cover for it.
Fixing Europe is harder than launching a hit pickup, because the pressure here is structural: too many brands, thin pricing power, rising costs and relentless competition, increasingly from China. Stellantis has the products to compete, as the Grande Panda and C3 Aircross show, but it needs the whole European business to make money, not just a handful of models. Until it does, this recovery rests on one continent, and that is a comfortable place to be right up until it isn't.
