Continental maintained its annual outlook after quarterly profit jumped 47%.
Reuters
Continental reported adjusted earnings before interest and tax of 605 million euros ($605 million) for the quarter, the supplier said in a statement on Thursday.
Global automotive production is recovering from drastically reduced output, both in the second quarter of this year after Russia's invasion of Ukraine and last year's third quarter, when supply chain snags hit the industry hard.
Production rose 11 percent compared to last quarter and 28 percent compared to the third quarter last year, Continental said, with the highest regional year-on-year growth in China.
Duerrfeld said the company saw no reason to pull back from the "extremely important" Chinese market, amid an ongoing debate in Germany about how to manage the economic relationship with an authoritarian government.
The Inflation Reduction Act had not spurred new plans to invest in the United States, but further relocation of production out of Germany beyond what was already outlined in the company's ongoing 2019 restructuring program could not be ruled out, she said.
Continental, which returned to profit in 2021 after two years of losses, was back in the red in the second quarter of this year but said at the time it expected improvements in the second half.
Measures taken to mitigate rising costs since then include passing on higher prices to customers and spreading raw materials purchasing across multiple suppliers.
Still, higher interest rates and valuation effects led to a net loss of 211 million euros in the third quarter.
"In light of the challenging environment, we did well to achieve our third-quarter forecast, but our financial results are not in line with our medium-term targets. However, we are on the right track and our order intake remains high," CEO Nikolai Setzer said.
Continental ranks No. 8 on the Automotive News list of the top 100 global suppliers, with worldwide parts sales to automakers of $22.4 billion in 2021.
