Continental anticipates OEMs business growth to slow next year because rising Asian and North American sales are only offsetting a difficult European business, Financial Times Deutschland quoted CEO Elmar Degenhart as saying.
Degenhart expects the company to post sales growth of more than 7% in 2012 to over EUR32.5bn (US$42.3bn), reported Reuters which noted Continental was supporting some of its suppliers who were facing difficulties.
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“Europe will stagnate at its current relatively low level. The trough should have been reached more or less. Maybe there will still be a decline of 1 to 2 percentage points,” Financial Times Deutschland cited Degenhart as saying.
For the January-September period, western Europe’s car market contracted by 7.6%. September saw the European new car market declining at the fastest rate in the past 12 months which led to almost all major carmakers posting double-figure declines for the month.
