March 12, 2026, 8:30 a.mMarch 12, 2026, 8:30 a.m
BMW is countering the crisis with surprising success. While competitors are reporting major drops in profits, BMW’s surplus only fell by 3 percent to just under 7.5 billion euros last year, the company announced.
Car manufacturer BMW reports robust figures.Image: keystone
This means that the company is well above the expectations of analysts, who had expected a profit of less than 7 billion. However, sales fell by 6.3 percent to 133 billion. And the forecast for 2026 is negative.
Nevertheless, BMW has so far come through the general crisis in the German auto industry comparatively well. Although it is already the third annual decline in profits, the two German competitors Mercedes and Volkswagen each almost halved their profits last year. In comparison, the decline at BMW is almost harmless.
That’s also enough to put the Munich-based company in first place in the profit ranking: Mercedes still had a profit of 5.3 billion euros in 2025, and the much larger Volkswagen Group had 6.9 billion.
No job cuts so far
And while other German car manufacturers are cutting jobs, BMW has so far gotten through the crisis without any job-cutting programs. A clear advantage of the Munich-based group is that it is at least partially spared from the tariffs there thanks to its own large factory in the USA.
Almost 413,000 cars were built in the factory in the USA last year, more than half of which remained in the USA. This means that BMW had to import less than half of the cars sold in the US.
They also benefit from the fact that they have designed their factories in such a way that electric cars, hybrids and combustion engines can be produced on one production line. This helps to cushion the uncertainties when electromobility ramps up.
Zipse’s last numbers
The annual balance sheet is the last for which CEO Oliver Zipse is responsible. His designated successor, Milan Nedeljkovic, will take over on May 14th. So far he is the head of production, a position that Zipse also held before his rise to the top of the company.
Nedeljkovic has been involved with Zipse’s most important project for a long time, which will have a say in the fate and fate of BMW in the coming years. The “New Class” model series, the first representative of which, the iX3, was introduced last year, has been available at dealers for a few days.
So far the series is off to a strong start. In view of high orders, BMW introduced an additional shift in production in January. BMW also plans to present the next car in the New Class shortly: with the i3 – the electric counterpart to the 3 Series – in a volume area that is central to the Munich-based company. (hkl/sda/awp/dpa)