Continental “comfortably achieves” 2016 targets

Key preliminary data for Continental’s 2016 financial year has been published, and this shows an increase in both sales and EBIT margin. Reported sales rose three per cent year-on-year to around €40.5 billion, and adjusted EBIT margin amounted to some 10.7 per cent. Upon announcing these results today, Continental wrote that the company “comfortably achieved” its annual targets as adjusted in October 2016.

In a statement, Continental shares that sales and earnings were strong in the fourth quarter of the year, adding that this was attributable partly to growth of its Automotive Group as well as the winter tyre business, which exceeded the strong sales volume seen in the same period of 2015.

“We continued our growth once again in 2016,” commented Dr Delmar Degenhart, chairman of Continental’s Executive Board. “In the Rubber Group, we sold a record 150 million tyres. Despite persistently weak demand in the oil and mining business, ContiTech’s EBIT margin almost reached the double-digit level at the end of the year, thus significantly exceeding the previous year’s figure. In the Automotive Group, we increased incoming orders by ten per cent to more than €33 billion in 2016. In addition to orders for advanced driver assistance products, which rose to more than €3 billion, orders for products and systems for hybrid and electric vehicles climbed by 17 per cent to €1.2 billion as well.

“For 2017, we are anticipating an increase in sales of over 6 percent to more than €43 billion,” Degenhart added. “Our target is to comfortably achieve an adjusted EBIT margin of more than 10.5 per cent. In this context, we are anticipating a slight increase in global production of passenger cars and light commercial vehicles with a total weight of up to six metric tons of one per cent from 92 million vehicles to around 93 million.”

Continental will release its preliminary business figures on 2 March 2017 as part of its digital annual financial press conference.