This is the first time since 1945 that the world’s largest auto parts supplier, Robert Bosch GmbH, posted its first annual loss. For 2010, the company expects to have a difficult time with just trying to break even.

Bosch CEO Franz Fehrenbach said that the economic crisis has hit the company hard. Sales in 2009 dropped by about 16% to 38 billion euros ($53.4 billion), while the company’s pretax loss is expected to have come to between 1.14 billion and 1.52 billion euros. The company aims to return to a pretax margin target of 7% to 8% in 2012 or 2013. Fehrenbach added that he anticipates that global car production will grow at a rate 10% to 15% this year. In 2009, sales at Bosch’s automotive division fell 18% to 21.7 billion euros. Nonetheless, the company says business has improved since the middle of 2009 and it expects the division to boost sales by 10% this year. It is still a long way to go though before it again sees sales levels achieved in 2007, since to do that, the division must grow by at least 30%. The company has a target to reach its pre-recession sales level again in 2012.

[via autonews - sub. required]

Tags: bosch, bosch first loss, car news

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 28th, 2010 at 4:17 pm and is filed under 2010, 4wheels News, Worldwide, Year, Zone. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.