FRANKFURT: Continental, the German car parts specialist, said Friday it got off to a good start to the year, driven largely by strong demand for its tyres.
"In light of the difficult market environment, we had a good start to the new fiscal year," said chief executive Elmar Degenhart.
This was "primarily attributable to volume growth in our tyre division and the stabilisation of industrial business" at the group's ContiTech, he explained.
In the period from January to March, group sales climbed by three percent to 9.85 billion euros ($11.2 billion), Continental said.
Negative exchange-rate effects sliced 2.1 percentage points off sales growth, it noted.
Underlying or operating profit climbed by five percent to 1.1 billion euros and the operating margin increased to 11.3 percent from 10.6 percent a year earlier.
"We expect the good development in the rubber group to continue over the remainder of the year, while the automotive group is expected to gain notable momentum again," the CEO said.
"For this reason, we are raising our forecast for the (operating) margin from more than 10.5 percent to around 11 percent," he added.
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