BMW Group has reported earnings before tax for the third quarter flat (-0.9%) on last year at just over €4 billion, due to the impact of special items.

However, the BMW Group EBT margin for the third quarter came in at 10.6% and for the nine-month-period from January to September, it was 11.9% – exceeding BMW’s strategic target of 10%.

Group revenues in the third quarter totalled €38,458 million, slightly up on the previous year (2022: €37,176 million; +3.4 %), mainly reflecting the higher sales volume and favourable product mix effects benefiting the Automotive segment.

The BMW Group delivered just under 622,000 vehicles to customers in the third quarter of 2023 – a year-on-year increase of 5.8%.

The core automotive segment’s operating result for the third quarter totalled just over 3.1 billion euros (9.1% ahead of last year), with an EBIT margin of 9.8%.

Year to date September, the EBIT margin came in at 10.3%.

In terms of Q3 EBIT, volume, model mix and pricing effects all contributed to a tailwind of around €300 million, compared to the prior-year quarter. The largest share of this position results from higher vehicle sales. However, the contribution from the model mix is only slightly lower than the previous year, despite (costly to produce) BEVs growth.

Year to date to September, deliveries rose 5.1% to around 1.84 million vehicles.

Group pre-tax earnings for the year to the end of September decreased by about 6.8 billion euros.

However, last year’s figure included one-time income of 7.7 billion euros from the revaluation of equity interests in BBA.

Without this effect and looking at the underlying operating result instead, BMW Group earnings were 900 million euros higher year-on-year in the first nine months.

BMW also said that its order books show ‘valuable impetus coming from new models like the BMW 5 Series.

Board member Walter Mertl said: “We expect this positive trend in deliveries to gain momentum in the fourth quarter – resulting in solid growth in vehicle sales for the full year, as forecasted in August.”

The number of BEV models delivered during the period from July and September totalled 93,931 units (2022: 52,305 units; +79.6 %), accounting for 15.1 % of total deliveries in the third quarter (2022: 8.9 %; +69.7 %). Deliveries of all-electric vehicles between January and September rose to 246,867 units (2022: 128,195 2 units; +92.6 %), driven in particular by a 119.3 % rise in deliveries of BMW brand BEVs. The share of all-electric vehicles in total deliveries increased accordingly to 13.4 % for the nine-month period (2022: 7.3 %; +83.6 %).

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