BMW's Buyback Machine Grinds On as 8,000 Jobs Head for the Exit

BMW repurchases shares despite 38.7% EBIT drop and 8,000 job cuts; i3 production starts as China deliveries fall 30%.

The contradiction at the heart of BMW's current strategy is hard to miss: even as the Munich-based automaker prepares to shed thousands of workers and its quarterly profit takes a battering, the company is quietly hoovering up its own shares. Between 3 and 9 August, BMW repurchased 599,668 ordinary shares under its 2025–2027 buyback programme, paying weighted average prices of roughly €59 to €61 per share on Xetra. The message from the boardroom is unambiguous — management considers the current valuation worth backing, operational turbulence notwithstanding.

That conviction is being tested. The stock trades at €59.52, a little over 5 percent above the 52-week low of €56.40 set in late July, and has shed 36 percent since the start of the year. The market capitalisation has shrunk to €35.38 billion, a far cry from where the company stood twelve months ago.

The Numbers Behind the Squeeze

The second quarter of 2026 made for grim reading. Group revenue fell 7.9 percent to €31.259 billion, while deliveries slipped 4.9 percent to 590,947 vehicles. The damage was far worse at the operating line: EBIT tumbled 38.7 percent to €1.631 billion, down from €2.635 billion in the same period a year earlier. China, once BMW's profit engine, has become its biggest headache — deliveries there collapsed 30.2 percent to 117,927 vehicles in the quarter.

The response came at the end of July, when management and the works council hammered out a personnel restructuring programme. Around 8,000 positions are slated to go by the end of 2027, mostly outside manufacturing and predominantly in Germany. The mechanism is a voluntary severance scheme running from October 2026 through the end of 2027, which media reports suggest should generate annual savings of roughly €1 billion from 2028 onward.

A Changing of the Guard in HR

The cost-cutting drive coincides with a leadership transition. Dorothea von Boxberg takes over as board member and head of human resources on 1 September, succeeding Ilka Horstmeier, who is leaving the company after more than three decades. Von Boxberg will be the one steering the redundancy programme through its implementation phase. Several departmental leadership roles were also reshuffled in early August.

The Electric Counterweight

While the workforce shrinks, BMW's production footprint is expanding. The Munich plant kicked off series production of the i3 — a cornerstone of the Neue Klasse generation — in August, with the first vehicles rolling off the line at the start of the month. The factory is slated to go fully electric by 2027, with BMW targeting a further 10 percent reduction in production costs versus the current generation.

The model offensive extends beyond Bavaria. From 2027, the Mexican plant in San Luis Potosí will build the iX3 and i3, while South Carolina gears up for series production of new high-voltage batteries for the iX5 in December. The company has said it plans 40 new models by the end of 2027, with the 3 Series and iX4 among the launch vehicles for 2026.

Brand Building Amid the Storm

BMW is also keeping up the marketing drumbeat. At the Monterey Car Week 2026, the company is presenting the BMW M Concept Neue Klasse and the Vision BMW ALPINA, alongside references to the M3 and its collaboration with Kith. Earlier, the brand ran a 15-day campaign placing "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" banners on vehicle displays worldwide, a promotion that wrapped up on 10 August.

What Analysts Make of It

The DZ Bank has already voted with its feet. In late July, it downgraded BMW from Buy to Hold and cut its price target from €75 to €65, a call that predates the latest buyback activity by roughly two weeks.

For shareholders, the picture remains split down the middle. On one side, shrinking margins and the China slump are squeezing earnings; on the other, the buyback programme continues uninterrupted and the electric transition is taking concrete shape on the factory floor. Whether the billion-euro savings from the job cuts can offset the revenue and profit slide is a question that will only be answered in the quarterly reports to come.