Record third-quarter profit for BMW & MINI

The BMW Group continues to perform well within a volatile market environment and recorded new highs to date for sales volumes, revenues and earnings in the third quarter 2015. These performance indicators also improved for the nine-month period, with new records established in each case.


"We continue to chart a course of profitable growth, with reported figures continuing their upward trend in the first nine months of the year”, stated Harald Krüger, the Chairman of the Board of Management of BMW AG on Tuesday in Munich.

Third-quarter worldwide sales of BMW, MINI and Rolls-Royce brand vehicles rose by 6.9% to 545,062 units (2014: 509,669 units), setting new records for this period. Helped by a tailwind from favourable currency factors, Group revenues climbed by 14.0% to € 22,345 million (2014: € 19,600 million). This strong performance helped push up profit before financial result (EBIT) by 4.3% to € 2,354 million (2014: € 2,256 million). Thanks to improvements within the financial result, Group profit before tax (EBT) increased by 12.8% to € 2,263 million (2014: € 2,006 million). In the third quarter of the previous year, the financial result had been negatively impacted by a number of items, most notably period-end losses arising on the fair value measurement of derivatives. In line with these figures, Group net profit for the third quarter came in at € 1,579 million, significantly higher than one year earlier (2014: € 1,310 million; +20.5%).

MINI recorded a 6.4% increase in sales volume in the third quarter, with sales rising to 80,488 units (2014: 75,633 units). Nine-month sales climbed by 18.7% to a new high of 246,426 units (2014: 207,529 units). The most pronounced increases were recorded for the MINI 3 and 5 door models, with sales almost doubling to a total of 162,791 units (2014: 83,508 units). A further surge should be generated by the new MINI Clubman, which has been available since the end of October.


Sales regions post higher nine-month sales figures
In order to maintain its strategy of profitable growth, the BMW Group remains committed to achieving an evenly balanced distribution of global sales in the world’s three major sales regions – Europe, Asia and the Americas – with the aim of preventing excessive dependence on individual markets. In line with this strategy, sales volume growth was recorded in all major sales regions for the period from January to September.

The first nine months of 2015 saw an extremely good performance in Europe, with sales up by 10.3% to 731,637 units (2014: 663,407 units). Sales volume in Germany during this period went up by 5.3% to 208,614 units (2014: 198,083 units). Great Britain – the BMW Group's fourth largest market – saw a 13.8% increase to 171,472 units (2014: 150,626 units) during the nine-month period, while the number of vehicles sold in France rose by 19.6% to 56,238 units (2014: 47,004 units). Sales volume in Italy increased by 11.5% to 50,895 units (2014: 45,666 units).

Sales of BMW and MINI vehicles in Asia grew by 4.2% to 503,160 units (2014: 482,718 units) for the nine-month period, including a 1.9% increase in sales on the Chinese mainland to 342,920 units (2014: 336,499 units). Nine-month sales in Japan climbed by 9.8% to 50,613 units (2014: 46,109 units).

A strong nine-month performance was also recorded in the Americas region, where the BMW Group sold 361,562 units (2014: 337,852 units), an increase of 7.0% compared to one year earlier. In the USA, sales volume increased by 7.0% to 295,728 units (2014: 276,491 units).
  

BMW Group reaffirms targets for the full year
Thanks to its attractive range of models, the BMW Group can look ahead confidently to the remainder of the current financial year and reaffirms its targets for the full year. Solid increases, and hence new record figures, are being targeted in 2015 for sales volume and Group profit before tax. The BMW Group also firmly intends to remain the world's leading premium manufacturer of vehicles in 2015.

However, the scale of increases during the forecast period is likely to be held down by fierce competition on automobile markets, rising personnel costs, continued high levels of upfront expenditure to safeguard business viability going forward and upcoming challenges relating to the normalisation of the Chinese market. A number of risks will also have to be faced, including the precarious state of the Russian market, macroeconomic uncertainties in Europe and the increasingly competitive situation in the USA.

Tailwinds are expected in the current year from the market launch of a total of 15 new and revised models as well as from the forecast positive development of international automobile markets.

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