The worldwide automotive market is rebounding strongly regardless of shortages of key elements like semiconductors. That was the message Tuesday from German carmaker BMW and Stellantis, which owns Jeep, Peugeot and Fiat, as each reported giant will increase in revenue.
BMW mentioned it made a web revenue of 4.8 billion euros, or $5.7 billion, within the second quarter of 2021 in contrast with a loss a 12 months earlier, when the pandemic pressured showrooms all over the world to shut. Gross sales soared 43 p.c to twenty-eight.6 billion euros, pushed by significantly sturdy will increase in China and the USA, BMW mentioned. Each gross sales and revenue had been greater than the identical quarter in 2019, earlier than the pandemic struck.
Stellantis, the product of a merger this 12 months of Fiat Chrysler and the French maker of Peugeot and Citroën vehicles, reported a web revenue for the primary six months of 2021 of 5.9 billion euros, in contrast with a loss a 12 months earlier, after gross sales rose 46 p.c to 75 billion euros.
The Stellantis figures are based mostly on a calculation of what the mixed firms’ gross sales and earnings would have been within the first half of 2020, had the merger already taken place. Stellantis didn’t publish quarterly figures.
On the identical time, each firms, which between them make use of greater than 400,000 folks, warned {that a} world scarcity of semiconductors is constant to disrupt manufacturing.
Nicolas Peter, the chief monetary officer of BMW, advised reporters throughout a convention name that the chip famine might curtail manufacturing by as a lot as 90,000 autos this 12 months.
That’s on prime of different dangers, together with additional waves of the pandemic, greater costs for uncooked supplies like metal, and excessive climate just like the floods in western Germany final month that killed practically 200 folks. “Confronted with all these dangers,” mentioned Oliver Zipse, the chief government of BMW, “the second half-year can be tougher for the BMW Group than the primary.”