BMW: Currency Hedging 2007

The BMW Group continued to perform successfully in 2007 despite difficult conditions, by achieving record figures for sales volume and revenues. External factors, continued to affect figures adversely. The ongoing weakness of the US dollar and the Japanese yen, the generally high cost of raw materials and less favorable financing conditions all continued to have a negative impact. This negative impact was increased by costs of market launches for numerous new models. Group revenues rose by 14.3% to € 56.02 billion, but they would have risen by an additional 17.6% without the exchange rate impact. The company had substantial US revenues, with over 25% of its sales taking place in US, and, although the company had production facilities in North America, local sales were higher than production resulting in an estimated positive revenue exposure to the US dollar of US$ 7.4 billion.