Continental aiming for 5% sales growth in 2015, releases preliminary 2014 results

The European replacement tyre market displayed a “pronounced weakness” in the four quarter of last year, says Continental Corporation, however during the 2014 fiscal year the company as a whole managed to grow year-on-year, and achieved an annual turnover of approximately €34.5 billion. The company’s adjusted EBIT margin exceeded 11 per cent.

“All in all, we systematically continued along our successful path last year despite the weak growth in Europe, Russia, and South America,” said Continental Executive Board chairman Dr. Elmar Degenhart upon announcing the company’s preliminary key figures at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. “We achieved this in spite of the further uncertainty added to the already volatile market development as a result of considerable exchange rate fluctuations in some cases or, as seen recently, the drop in the price of oil. The adjusted EBIT exceeding €3.8 billion is further proof of the outstanding performance achieved yet again by our more than 190,000 employees.

“For 2015, we expect global production figures for passenger cars with a gross vehicle weight rating up to 6 metric tons to increase moderately once again, rising from around 87 to roughly 89 million vehicles,” Degenhart continued. “We are therefore aiming for sales growth of around five per cent to a figure exceeding €36 billion. With this, we want to once again securely confirm our double-digit adjusted EBIT margin,” The Executive Board chairman pointed out that the consolidation effects from the Veyance acquisition have not been taken into consideration in this outlook.

Continental will present its preliminary business figures on 5 March 2015, during its first entirely digital financial press conference.