BMW races ahead to new quarterly records

FRANKFURT: German automaker BMW on Tuesday reaffirmed its targets for the full year after clocking up record sales volumes and earnings in the first three months.

"The BMW group remains confident in achieving its forecast targets for the current financial year," said chief executive Harald Krueger.

"We reaffirm our targets for the full year. We forecast slight increases, and thus new record figures for sales volume and group profit before tax in 2016," Krueger said.

In the period from January to March, BMW sold a total 557,605 vehicles worldwide, a record for the first quarter, it said.

That translated into revenues of 20.85 billion euros ($24 billion), or a drop of 0.3 percent from the year-earlier figure, largely due to "unfavourable currency factors, such as the value of the British pound and the Chinese renminbi against the euro," the carmaker said.

Underlying, or operating, profit fell by 2.5 percent to 2.46 billion euros, but bottom-line net profit rose by 8.2 percent to 1.64 billion euros, "also marking a new first-quarter record," BMW said.