Last year the company built 64,000 units and increased net sales by 5% to ВЈ4.65bn but its third quarter sales dropped by 29% as demand dried up around the world.
The company made a loss of almost ВЈ104m (representing a negative 11.4% margin) in the last three months which limited annual profit to ВЈ150m compared to ВЈ350m for 2007.
To cope with the downturn, Volvo CE has cut production output at all its factories and served redundancy notices on 3,400 employees with most job losses in Sweden. Stock levels at its factories have reduced by 19% since October and it expects a further 20% decrease in the first quarter of 2009.
Its outlook for 2009 is:
Europe will decline by 30-40%North America will fall between 10% and 20%Rest of the world likely to be down by around 30%Tenn. economy hasn’t hit bottom yet, UT reports
Cemex suffered 36% dive in UK sales in latest three months’ figures
