BAYERISCHE MOTOREN WERKE 
By PARIS (Reuters) - French auto parts supplier Faurecia (>> FAURECIA) posted first-quarter sales up 3.4 percent as a recovery in European demand more than made up for lost business in North America.
Global revenue advanced to 4.52 billion euros (3.71 billion pounds) in the first three months of the year from 4.37 billion last year, Faurecia said on Thursday.
Faurecia, 51.7 percent-owned by carmaker PSA Peugeot Citroen (>> PEUGEOT), is among suppliers that stand to benefit from a fragile auto market recovery in Europe, where quarterly registrations rose 8.1 percent amid cut-throat price competition.
Product sales rose 9.1 percent to 2.05 billion euros in Europe but tumbled 13.6 percent to 833 million in North America, the company's second-biggest market.
Faurecia, which makes dashboards, door panels and exhausts for customers including Volkswagen (>> Volkswagen AG), blamed the North American sales slide on the phasing out of several older car models.
U.S. sales "will continue to be weak before a progressive recovery" in the latter half of the year, Faurecia said.
The company also lost a contract to supply seats for BMW's (>> Bayerische Motoren Werke AG) X5 sport utility vehicle when an updated model went into U.S. production. Sales of interior parts also fell 10.7 percent in North America.
A weakening of emerging-market currencies against the euro also sapped revenue by 3.1 percent, Faurecia said, but that did not prevent Asian sales advancing 18.6 percent on a reported basis to 441 million euros.
The French supplier reiterated its pledge to deliver positive net cash flow in 2014 while increasing sales by 2-4 percent and the operating margin by 0.2-0.5 points on last year's 3 percent of revenue.
(Reporting by Laurence Frost; Editing by Maya Nikolaeva and David Goodman)
