Thanks to their brilliant financial maneuver previously mentioned here, Porsche’s 2008 profits actually exceed their revenues.

Porsche’s profits before taxes of $11.6 billion in the fiscal year ended in July were actually larger than its total revenues from sales of $10.2 billion. Not even Google has profits exceeding 100%. Only 12% of Porsche’s profits came from making cars.

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In 2005 the CEO started buying into VW, at a time when VW stock was below $50. Today it’s at almost $400, and in October it briefly hit more than twice that when Porsche revealed that it indirectly owned options to acquire 74% of VW. (Analysts are guessing that the company is paying an average price for VW stock of $100 to $150 per share.)

The announcement sparked such a panic by short-sellers that the company offered to boost liquidity by selling options on more than 3% of VW stock – making in the process another tidy profit that Goldman Sachs estimates to be about $8 billion.

By having options on so many of the shares, there really weren’t enough shares for those shorting the stock to make good on their promises, producing the drastic run-up in the VW price — and an absurdly huge windfall for Porsche.