(new: price, further details and analysts)

FRANKFURT (dpa-AFX) - Shares in Vitesco almost completely recovered their massive initial losses in late trading on Thursday. At last count, the papers of the automotive supplier cost 62.40 euros, just a touch below their closing price of the previous day. In the morning, they had fallen by up to 10 percent to their lowest level since the beginning of January following a disappointingly received margin outlook. Year to date, however, the share price gain adds up to about 14 percent.

Vitesco expects automakers' production to rise this year, leading it to forecast sales and profit growth. The group had already published key data for the past fiscal year a month ago. Not yet known was the net result: which was again in positive territory at 23.6 million euros. In 2021, the bottom line was still a loss of 122 million. As expected, Vitesco will not pay a dividend for the past year.

The outlook did not go down well with some investors, who had hoped for higher annual targets. In terms of free cash inflow, analysts had expected more than twice as much as Vitesco's outlook of about 50 million euros. Analyst Himanshu Agarwal of Jefferies said the market had to adjust its expectations with this. According to a trader, the targets confirmed that the auto supplier cannot fully pass on higher costs to its customers or absorb them through higher productivity.

The auto supplier's outlook is likely to bring down the consensus estimate for operating profit (Ebit) by a mid-single-digit percentage, analyst David Lesne of UBS expects. In contrast, his colleague Chris McNally of analyst firm Evercore ISI rated the outlook as "robust" and praised the order situation as "impressive."/edh/jkr/jha/