BMW cheers investors with plan to sell more than 2m cars a year
BMW shares soared 7.3 per cent yesterday after the German car group pledged to expand its production plant in the United States and repeated its confidence in selling more than 2m cars in the coming year.
Boss Nobert Reithofer said BMW expects to post “a significant rise in sales volumes” in 2014 with a corresponding rise in profits.
Margins for the automotive business are set to come in between eight and ten per cent, compared to 9.4 per cent a year ago, as spending on new technologies offsets booming sales, the firm said yesterday. “We expect group profit before tax to rise significantly in the current year, despite ongoing volatile business conditions,” Reithofer said.
He added that BMW will reveal at the end of the month how much it will spend on expanding at Spartanburg, South Carolina.
The group also revealed that it paid Reithofer €7.03m (£5.8m) last year, up six per cent on the previous year.