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BMW upgrades 2010 outlook following profitable quarter

BMW, the world’s leading luxury car maker, posted Wednesday a first-quarter net profit to €324 million, and upgraded its full-year outlook.

BMW upgrades 2010 outlook following profitable quarter
Photo: DPA

The company made a net loss of €152 million in the first three months of 2009.

BMW reported core earnings of €291 million on sales of €12.443 billion, compared with a first-quarter 2009 loss of €251 million on €11.5 billion in sales.

The net profit figure exceeded an analyst forecast of €247 million compiled by Dow Jones Newswires, but sales were slightly below their outlook of €12.6 billion. A total of 315,614 vehicles were delivered, an increase of 13.8 percent.

Core earnings for the entire group, including BMW motorcycles and financial services, came to 449 million euros, compared with a loss of €55 million in the first three months of 2009.

For all of 2010, BMW chairman Norbert Reithofer said the group was “aiming to achieve significantly higher group earnings” than in 2009, an improvement from the previous outlook for “notable” growth in earnings.

“The BMW Group has made a good start to 2010. We increased earnings significantly in the first quarter and are now back on a growth course on almost all car markets,” Reithofer said in a statement. “We expect that earnings will grow dynamically over the course of the year,” he added.

The company plans to sell more than 1.3 billion automobiles this year to remain ahead of rivals Daimler and Audi in the premium car segment, a forecast that was unchanged.

Most regions around the world reported higher sales, with Asia posting a jump of 55.7 percent and North America gaining 9.2 percent.

BMW’s results were boosted by strong sales of the company’s new 5 Series and its new X1 sports utility vehicle. Mini sales were 13.6 percent higher and the BMW group also sold a total of 279 Rolls-Royce limousines, a gain of more than 60 percent.

The statement termed the launch of the new Rolls-Royce Ghost “extremely successful.”

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MUNICH

Four injured as WWII bomb explodes near Munich train station

Four people were injured, one of them seriously, when a World War II bomb exploded at a building site near Munich's main train station on Wednesday, emergency services said.

Smoke rises after the WWII bomb exploded on a building site in Munich.
Smoke rises after the WWII bomb exploded on a building site in Munich. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Privat

Construction workers had been drilling into the ground when the bomb exploded, a spokesman for the fire department said in a statement.

The blast was heard several kilometres away and scattered debris hundreds of metres, according to local media reports.

Images showed a plume of smoke rising directly next to the train tracks.

Bavaria interior minister Joachim Herrmann told Bild that the whole area was being searched.

Deutsche Bahn suspended its services on the affected lines in the afternoon.

Although trains started up again from 3pm, the rail operator said there would still be delays and cancellations to long-distance and local travel in the Munich area until evening. 

According to the fire service, the explosion happened near a bridge that must be passed by all trains travelling to or from the station.

The exact cause of the explosion is unclear, police said. So far, there are no indications of a criminal act.

WWII bombs are common in Germany

Some 75 years after the war, Germany remains littered with unexploded ordnance, often uncovered during construction work.

READ ALSO: What you need to know about WWII bomb disposals in Germany

However, most bombs are defused by experts before they explode.

Last year, seven World War II bombs were found on the future location of Tesla’s first European factory, just outside Berlin.

Sizeable bombs were also defused in Cologne and Dortmund last year.

In 2017, the discovery of a 1.4-tonne bomb in Frankfurt prompted the evacuation of 65,000 people — the largest such operation since the end of the war in Europe in 1945.

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