The V-shaped recovery everyone was hoping for when the pandemic first hit seems to be happening as we speak. BMW just reported its first quarter financial results and the numbers are looking better than ever. The German company managed to sell more cars in the first three months of 2021 than ever before in its over a century of existence. In total, the BMW Group delivered 636,606 units in the first quarter, an increase of 33.4 percent compared to the pandemic-stricken Q1 of 2020.
The demand for electrified vehicles has also gone through the roof. According to BMW, sales of electrified cars more than doubled in the first quarter, with a total of 70,207 units delivered to customers during the three month period. By comparison, during the same period of 2020 only 30,692 units were sold. That’s in increase of 128.7%. That’s very encouraging considering BMW is also launching two new fully electric models later this year, the iX and i4.
The sales increase also brought along an increase in revenue and earnings. China was particularly strong in this regard. Group revenues grew by 15.2% to € 26,778 million, an increase of 18.9 percent compared to 2020. This also meant that the BMW Group’s profit before financial result for the first quarter rose to over 3 billion euros. In turn, this led to a significant improvement in the first quarter financial result, which turned around from a net negative amount of € 577 million to a net positive amount of € 732 million.
Worldwide deliveries of BMW brand vehicles totalled 560,543 units (2020: 411,809 units; +36.1%). The figure included excellent contributions from the highly successful BMW 5 Series and BMW 3 Series, both of which recorded year-on-year growth of more than 40%. At 74,683 units, MINI brand sales were 16% higher than one year earlier (2020: 64,449 units; +15.9%) while Rolls-Royce delivered 1,380 ultra-luxury automobiles to customers, the highest number ever achieved in a single quarter, China, the US and Asia-Pacific regions leading the charge.
