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BMW is on a roll

BMW is on a roll

Posted May 16th 2006 4:32PM

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BMW is doing much better than the luxury carmaker had forecast. Speaking at the company's annual meeting, CEO Helmut Panke (right) revealed that the company will reach its 2008 target of 1.4 million in annual car sales a full year ahead of schedule, in 2007. He is now targeting 1.6 million units by 2010 - almost twice the company's unit sales in 2000.

Even without the windfall profits from the sale of the Rolls-Royce aircraft engine business earlier this year, BMW will book a record pretax profit of about $5.15 billion in 2006, driven by strong sales growth (up 13.9 percent in the first quarter) and efficiency improvements. All this despite the drag of a strong euro (vs. a weak dollar) and the rising cost of raw materials.

Now that's the kind of news a CEO likes to take to the annual meeting...

[Source: BMW]

Category: BMW, Mini, Rolls-Royce, Earnings/Financials

Tags: bmw annual meeting, bmw earnings, bmw growth, bmw sales, hemut panke, HemutPanke

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8 Comments

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Micah

Hehe...Hanky Panke.

May 17 2006 at 1:11 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

P.L.

Being a BMW car owner I am not impressed. While the latest of BMW editions posess high tech engineering they have progressed off the wrong design(as in ugly and feminine) path. With each successive generation these cars are increasing difficult to fix and maintain. In fact they are designed to be serviced exclusively by dealers' proprietary knowledge-base and tools. BMW may be one of the best driver's car but not the best keeper in the lot. Historically their reliability and BMW's accountability has been sorely lacking. The people who buy these new cars can afford to dispose these expensive cars every few years.

May 17 2006 at 10:12 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

donald douglas

Its all about product baby, good product good sales, lousy product (GM) lousy sales !!!

May 17 2006 at 1:32 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

David Parker Brown

You are all jealous of how well BMW is doing, when DC's Mecedes, VW's Audi, Toytota's Lexus, etc are not doing as well.

May 16 2006 at 10:11 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Torz

Too bad they couldn't be this successful when they were making attractive cars.

May 16 2006 at 9:52 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Steve Kilburn

These days only arrogance can work. The more arrogance you have the more successful you are. Look at Rolls-Royce, bentley, aston martin. Full of arrogance. BMW is on right track. Keep up your arrogance BMW, you will be even more successful.

May 16 2006 at 7:26 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

MikeW

They will not stay at the top with the arrogant way they position their product.

Look at the stripper N52 engine, it ruins the whole I6 experience. Terrible intake sound, muted exhaust [no variable back pressure muffler], lack luster power [the old M54 were WAY old and underpowered]

I could see BMW doing this in the 1-series, but the 3 series starts at $30,000 and this social engineering should not be at this price level.

May 16 2006 at 5:10 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

jules

BMW remain at the upper-end of the market with mass market appeal, quite an achievement. For completeness, the aero-engine sale was a BMW-Rolls joint venture for small jet engines. Rolls-Royce plc is a seperate concern involved in aero-engines and turbines. They also licence the Rolls-Royce brand to BMW for the manufacture and sale of the motor cars.

May 16 2006 at 4:48 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply