The car manufacturer BMW earned more in the past quarter despite the delivery bottlenecks for electronic chips.
The surplus increased by 42 percent compared to the same quarter of the previous year and reached a record value of 2.58 billion euros.
The semiconductor shortage has shortened the vehicle supply, so that BMW was able to enforce higher prices for its new and used cars, the company announced on Wednesday in Munich.
Chief Financial Officer Nicolas Peter said: "We are on the finish line for our annual forecast and look confidently to the future." Because production in the factories repeatedly stalled due to the semiconductor shortage, the BMW Group sold only 593,200 cars between July and September thus 12 percent less than in the third quarter of the previous year.
But the semiconductors were mostly built into more expensive, more profitable models, and because of the lower supply, BMW had to give customers fewer discounts.
Returning leasing vehicles were also worth more.
Consolidated sales rose in the third quarter, contrary to the expectations of many analysts, by 4.5 percent to 27.47 billion euros.
The risk of default on auto loans decreased.
The group result before taxes rose by 39 percent to 3.4 billion euros, after taxes remained 2.6 billion.
CFO Peter said: “We expect that we will continue to deal with semiconductor supply beyond 2021.” For the year as a whole, deliveries should be “solidly above the level of the previous year” and the consolidated result “significantly above the previous year's value”.
After nine months, BMW has already achieved record figures for deliveries, sales and consolidated earnings: with 1.932 million cars sold, sales of 82.8 billion euros and earnings of 13.2 billion euros before taxes.