Ladies and Gentlemen,
Good morning!
The spread of the coronavirus and the measures to contain it strongly affected the BMW Group’s business development in the first quarter of 2020. Sales decreased significantly, especially in China. This impacted our earnings position in the first three months of the year. Local production facilities and retail outlets there have since reopened, and the situation is now recovering.
In March, due to the decline in demand resulting from the coronavirus, we shut down production at our European plants, in the US and South Africa. When plants can ramp up again will depend on how customer demand develops after the gradual opening of more retail outlets.
The situation remains extremely volatile. As before, it is unclear, how and when public life will be largely back to normal. For this reason, it is currently not foreseeable that demand for automobiles will move towards the level assumed in mid-March over the next few weeks.
As Oliver Zipse has already explained, we are currently planning in various scenarios. Accordingly, we are expanding our guidance for the financial year and are expecting an EBIT margin in the Automotive segment of between 0 and 3 percent.
I’ll go into more detail on the guidance shortly.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Particularly in crisis situations, liquidity is essential. The BMW Group further increased its already strong liquidity position to almost 19 billion euros at the end of the quarter. We still have the best rating of any European car manufacturer and the second-best worldwide. Because of our solid credit rating, we continue to enjoy good access to international capital markets.
We keep our word – and that is more important than ever during this crisis. For the previous financial year 2019, we will pay a dividend to our shareholders and share our profit with employees, as promised.
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SOURCE: BMW Group
