Frankfurt, Apr 21: Chrysler, the troubled US arm of German-US auto giant DaimlerChrysler, has expressed confidence that it will be able to cruise back into profit this year. "We're now measuring ourselves by net profit and we're stating clearly that we want to end the year in positive territory," chairman Dieter Zetsche, said, in an interview published in the Financial Times Deutschland on Tuesday. So far, DaimlerChrysler has only promised that Chrysler would return to profit at operating level after running up an operating loss of 506 million euros (602 million dollars) last year. However, the group has become a bit more optimistic recently, with DaimlerChrysler's finance chief Manfred Gentz saying last month that a return to profit at only operating level was a "very cautious" prediction. Chrysler, which was hit by ferocious price competition on its home US market last year, recorded rising sales for five months in a row between October and February. By contrast, March sales were down.
Bureau Report