2024-04-20 10:00:00
Bosch once again emerges victorious in the face of “unfavorable market situations.” The company, the largest manufacturer of automotive components globally, closed the 2023 financial year with a record turnover of 91,596 million euros, which represented an increase of 3.8% compared to the previous year.
This indicator, however, is not in line with what they had set as their objective for the year – originally, they had proposed to do it between 6% and 9% – but it is adjusted to take into account the effects of inflation, so growth ended at 8%.
Operating profit (Ebit) closed the year with 4.8 billion euros, and an operating margin of 5.3%, one percentage point above what was recorded in 2022. Taking this into account, the net profit was 2.64 billion, a increase of 43.6% compared to the previous year.
According to Bosch’s CFO, Markus Forschner, «we need a high level of profitability and financial strength to be able to reinvest as much as possible in our growth. “The year 2024 suggests that it will be as difficult as the one we just closed.”
The German manufacturer has an atypical structure, in which its statutes prohibit it from going public on the stock markets and, therefore, all its financing depends on how positive its financial results have been.
Looking ahead to 2024, “we do not expect any favorable winds, and we consider that world economic growth will be around 2.3%, with stagnant vehicle production,” in the words of Forschner. The growth could come, according to the manager, from consumer goods, an area where Bosch has expanded, with a new refrigerator factory in Mexico and a glass-ceramic factory in Egypt.
In the first quarter of the year, Bosch sales fell 0.8%, which, once adjusted for exchange rates, the percentage increases to 2.7%. “This shows that our intentions to remain between 5% and 7% are very ambitious,” said Forschner, who noted that the company has restructuring plans “that will have a negative impact before their benefits are noticed.”
The growth area where Bosch wants to focus for this year is sustainable mobility, with 30 new projects planned for the electric car. “We have to determine the pace of electrification of the different regions of the world,” said the CEO of Bosch, Stefan Hartung. “We believe that 70% of cars will be electric in Europe in 2030, while in China and North America, the figure will be around half.”
The technology for autonomous vehicles, with redundant brakes and electronic systems that control movement – what Bosch calls VMM – the company is growing 10% annually and expects to have an order book in the hundreds of millions by 2030.
In 2023, the automotive area – called Mobility – reached a turnover of 56.2 billion euros, 6.9% more, which, adjusting for the effects of the exchange rate, is equivalent to 10.9%. The operating margin was 4.4%, one point higher than in 2022.
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