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BMW continues to light up road
FRANKFURT, Germany (CNN) -- BMW, the world's second biggest luxury car maker, said on Wednesday third-quarter profit rose thanks to strong sales of the 3-series and X5 sports utility. Net income rose almost 12 percent to 433 million euros, or 0.64 euros a share, in the three months to September 2002 from 388 million euros, or 0.58 euros a share, a year ago. Sales jumped 19 percent to 9.97 million euros. The company, which ranks second in the luxury car market to its German rival DaimlerChrysler, reiterated it was on track to sell more than one million vehicles this year. BMW's focus on its luxury range has enabled it to escape the battering many mass-market producers have experienced from the global economic slowdown. "The BMW group expects to be able to continue this good progress during the fourth quarter 2002 and forecasts its sales volume will outperform both the overall market and the premium segments of the market,'' the company said in a statement.
"Based on this positive sales volume performance, the BMW Group will surpass the record levels of revenues and earnings achieved in the previous year," it added. The company sold 262,066 BMW and MINI brand cars in the third quarter of 2002, up almost 24 percent. It delivered 805,808 cars to customers in the first nine months of this year. Pretax profit rose 1.5 percent to 689 million euros in the period while analysts polled by Reuters had expected the company to post a pre-tax profit of 692 million euros for the three months to end-September on sales of 9.6 billion euros. BMW is spending billions of euros on research and developing new models to topple DaimlerChrysler's Mercedez-Benz.
The Munich-based group is launching a two-seater Z4 sportscar later this year to replace its Z3 model, it will offer the first BMW-made Rolls Royce from January, and it is introducing a new version of its key 5-series saloon next year. On top of next year's launches, it has a small 1-series, a larger 6-series, and a new sports utility vehicle, the X-3, on its list of 2004 launches. BMW's stock, which has risen 4 percent this year, edged up 0.7 percent to 39.80 euros in early Frankfurt trading on Thursday.
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