"The world's largest car supplier warns profits will fall below 2%"

The world's largest automotive components supplier, Bosch, will face significant financial pressure in 2025. Recently, according to the German Manager Magazin, Bosch CEO Stefan Hartung stated in an internal email to employees that the group's profit margin in 2025 will be significantly lower than 2%, falling far short of expectations. In 2024, Bosch's operating profit margin had already decreased from 4.8% in 2023 to 3.5%. Hartung pointed out in the email that part of the decrease in profits in 2025 is due to the high restructuring costs of up to 3.1 billion euros, which is set aside as a provision for plans such as layoffs, accounting for about 3.5% of sales. The report also stated that Bosch's revenue in 2025 is expected to be around 91 billion euros, slightly higher than the 90 billion euros in 2024. However, this growth is mainly due to the approximately 4 billion euros in revenue from the acquisition of Johnson Controls-Hitachi. Excluding the impact of this acquisition, the actual revenue for Bosch last year actually experienced a decline. Bosch will release its 2025 financial report data on January 30th. On January 8th of this year, Hartung had already issued a warning about the 2025 financial report in a media interview, predicting that Bosch's profits in 2025 will see a significant decline, and he bluntly stated that 2026 will also be full of challenges, with the company likely not achieving its long-term operating profit margin target of 7% until at least 2027. He attributed the reasons to high tariffs and weak economic growth stifling consumer spending.