Aston Martin posted a bigger-than-expected first-quarter loss on Wednesday.

The British luxury carmaker made fewer cars and burned more cash than analysts anticipated. It reported a pretax deficit of US$138 million for the three months to the end of March. That was about double last year's total and worse than analysts projected.

Aston Martin has launched several new cars over the past year. And it stopped production of old models ahead of the ramp up in production of more new autos later this year.

Chairman Lawrence Stroll said the first quarter performance reflected an expected period of transition. In an example of further change, the company named Bentley head Adrian Hallmark as its new chief executive officer in March.

Investors weren't impressed by Wednesday's figures though. Shares in the firm plummeted as much as 14%, though they later recovered to trade down 7%. The second quarter's performance is expected to be broadly similar to the first.

However, Aston Martin kept its forecast for this year unchanged.

  - Reuters