German auto manufacturer BMW AG yesterday said that its profits dipped in the second quarter of this year as supply bottlenecks and Chinese COVID-19 lockdowns knocked production.
The automaker’s profits for the period between April and June fell to 3 billion euros (US$3.1 billion) from 4.8 billion euros in the same period last year.
BMW CEO Oliver Zipse recognized “unfavorable conditions,” but said in a statement that the Munich-based group had shown “a high degree of resilience.”
Photo: AFP
“Ongoing semiconductor supply issues and supply chain disruptions following COVID lockdowns in China,” a key market for automakers, held back production in the first half of the year, BMW said in a statement.
BMW shipped just more than 563,000 units in the second quarter of this year, a drop of 19.8 percent from a year earlier.
Like other premium automakers, the limits to production meant that BMW leaned more heavily on its top-of-the-range models with bigger margins.
The group benefited from this better “product mix” and higher prices for its vehicles, which partially offset the fall in the number of vehicles sold, BMW said.
The group said economic conditions would “remain difficult” in the second half of this year, with the war in Ukraine also disrupting supply and weighing on the industry.
Unit sales in the second half would be “solidly higher,” BMW said, but would “not fully compensate for lost volume” in the first half, meaning deliveries of its vehicles would now be “slightly below” the level of last year.
Strong demand and recent tight supply meant BMW had an “above-average order bank.”
However, high inflation on the back of soaring energy prices would cool the economy and see BMW’s order backlog “normalize towards the end of the year.”
BMW’s predictions did not take into account the impact that a cut to Russian gas supplies to Europe could have on its production locally.
Japanese technology giant Softbank Group Corp said Tuesday it has sold its stake in Nvidia Corp, raising US$5.8 billion to pour into other investments. It also reported its profit nearly tripled in the first half of this fiscal year from a year earlier. Tokyo-based Softbank said it sold the stake in Silicon Vally-based Nvidia last month, a move that reflects its shift in focus to OpenAI, owner of the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT. Softbank reported its profit in the April-to-September period soared to about 2.5 trillion yen (about US$13 billion). Its sales for the six month period rose 7.7 percent year-on-year
CRESTING WAVE: Companies are still buying in, but the shivers in the market could be the first signs that the AI wave has peaked and the collapse is upon the world Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported a new monthly record of NT$367.47 billion (US$11.85 billion) in consolidated sales for last month thanks to global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Last month’s figure represented 16.9 percent annual growth, the slowest pace since February last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 11 percent. Cumulative sales in the first 10 months of the year grew 33.8 percent year-on-year to NT$3.13 trillion, a record for the same period in the company’s history. However, the slowing growth in monthly sales last month highlights uncertainty over the sustainability of the AI boom even as
BUST FEARS: While a KMT legislator asked if an AI bubble could affect Taiwan, the DGBAS minister said the sector appears on track to continue growing The local property market has cooled down moderately following a series of credit control measures designed to contain speculation, the central bank said yesterday, while remaining tight-lipped about potential rule relaxations. Lawmakers in a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee voiced concerns to central bank officials that the credit control measures have adversely affected the government’s tax income and small and medium-sized property developers, with limited positive effects. Housing prices have been climbing since 2016, even when the central bank imposed its first set of control measures in 2020, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lo Ting-wei (羅廷瑋) said. “Since the second half of
Tax revenue from securities transactions last month increased 41.9 percent from a year earlier to NT$30.3 billion (US$975.8 million), rising on an annual basis for the third consecutive month and marking the highest for the month of October as Taiwanese stocks continued to perform strongly, data released by the Ministry of Finance showed yesterday. Last month, the TAIEX surged 2,412.81 points, or 9.34 percent, marking its largest-ever monthly rise for October as market sentiment was buoyed by a nearly 15 percent gain in contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which accounts for more than 40 percent of the
RSS