Porsche SE improved its full-year forecast after the carmaking division’s sales beat analysts’ estimates as the new Panamera sedan attracted buyers, Bloomberg reported.

The loss for the year ending July 31 will be less than 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion), the maker of the 911 sports-car said in a statement. That compares with a “low single-digit” billion-euro loss forecast on March 17. Nine-month sales by the car-manufacturing unit rose 12 percent to 5.2 billion euros, while the operating profit was 600 million euros.

“These are good numbers,” said Daniel Schwarz, an analyst at Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt who has a “reduce” recommendation on the stock. “The Panamera is proving a boon to Porsche’s car business. They’re doing better than expected.”

The company, which took a majority stake in Volkswagen AG in January 2009, posted its first net loss since 1994 last year because of writedowns on the value of options on shares of Europe’s biggest carmaker following a failed hostile takeover. Volkswagen turned around and acquired 49.9 percent of Stuttgart, Germany-based Porsche’s carmaking business in December.

Porsche rose as much as 1.04 euros, or 3 percent, to 35.64 euros and was up 2.1 percent as of 11:58 a.m. in Frankfurt trading, valuing the carmaker at 6.2 billion euros.

Nine-month deliveries declined 0.1 percent from a year earlier to 53,605 cars and sport-utility vehicles, Porsche said. The company sold 13,906 Panameras in the period. The model, Porsche’s latest and its first car with four doors, cost 1 billion euros to develop and went on sale in Germany last September. Porsche has a fiscal-2010 target of selling 20,000 Panameras, which is priced starting at 94,600 euros.