The Volkswagen Group subsidiary made €5 billion ($5.5 billion) in earnings before interest, taxes and special items from its core car manufacturing business – excluding financial services – according to VW’s annual report on Tuesday.

This was almost a quarter more than its profit the year before.

Porsche delivered around 302,000 cars, almost 11% more, and increased sales by 16.1% to €30.3 billion. Its operating margin was 16.5% – again an improvement on 15.4% in the previous year.

Porsche is considered the most valuable part of the Wolfsburg group and is set to be floated on the stock exchange this year.

The IPO would help the wider Volkswagen Group raise money for an expensive transition from making cars with combustion engines to making all-electric models.

The flotation would also enable the Porsche and Piëch families, which hold a majority of the shares in the VW Group, to exert influence directly on Porsche rather than having to act through the wider group as is currently the case.

The value of Porsche is estimated by some financial analysts at €80-100 billion.

In the share sale, up to 25% of Porsche preference shares could go to the stock exchange and 25% plus one ordinary share to the Porsche and Piëch families’ holding company Porsche Automobil Holding.

Just under half of the total proceeds are to be passed on to shareholders as a special dividend.

VW is targeting the fourth quarter for the IPO.