STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Sweden's Autoliv forecast lower-than-expected organic sales growth this year and delayed its 2020 sales and margin targets, blaming a slowdown in car production and sales as well as an increase in raw material prices.
The world's largest maker of airbags and seat-belts said on Friday it was maintaining its targets of reaching more than $10 billion (8 billion pounds) in sales and around 13 percent in adjusted operating margin, but no longer expected to reach them in 2020.
Autoliv, a rival of Joyson Safety Systems and ZF TRW, did not say when it expected to achieve the goals.
The company's Stockholm-listed shares were down over 3.5 percent at 1132 GMT, while its U.S. shares were down about 4.7 percent in premarket trading.
Autoliv also forecast organic sales growth of around 5 percent this year, below the 7.1 percent seen in a poll of analysts and an unchanged rate versus 2018, partly due to call-offs by its car-manufacturing customers.
The company had already in October scaled back its 2018 growth forecast to around 6 percent amid a string from warnings from automakers struggling with slower demand in China while new emission rules delayed sales in Europe.
China, the world's biggest auto market, contracted for the first time in more than two decades in 2018 under the strain of Beijing's trade war with the United States and some eurozone economies have also shown signs of a slowdown.
For a graphic on monthly auto sales in China in 2018, see: https://tmsnrt.rs/2Omlt8r
(Reporting by Esha Vaish in Stockholm; editing by Niklas Pollard)
