Strong sales, high costs

Net profit of the whole group rose to 1.39 billion euros ($1.84 billion) in the second quarter of 2013, BMW reported Thursday. That compared with 1.28 billion euros in the same period last year.

Group revenues climbed by 1.8 percent, to 19.55 billion euros. "We continue to predict a group profit before tax for 2013 on a similar scale to 2012," CEO Norbert Reithofer said in a statement.

The bottom-line profit was mainly attributable to BMW's financial arm rather than its car-producing segment. In fact, second-quarter earnings from it core vehicle operations including its flagship BMW brand, the compact urban Mini and Rolls Royce, dropped by 13 percent to 1.76 billion euros, despite strong sales.

BMW's Financial Services Department runs a bank of its own, founded in 1971, which has been involved in projects ranging from car financing schemes for clients to credit card operations, insurance programs and asset management.

Innovation drive

BMW confirmed it was launching a series of new models this year and in 2014, including the all-electric i3 model which the company presented during promotion shows in London, New York and Beijing earlier this week. High investment costs for those new models had eaten into the car division's profit in the past few months.

In a fresh study by the Center of Automotive Management in Bergisch Gladbach, Germany, BMW was mentioned as one of the four companies with the biggest innovation drive worldwide.

Alongside Toyota, Volkswagen and Daimler, the Munich carmaker was responsible for 68 percent of all genuinely new inventions in the automotive sector. The survey showed that most other volume producers were content to copy the market leaders rather than come up with their own ground-breaking ideas.

hg/rc (dpa, Reuters)