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Over the years the company has suffered some major setbacks including the death of its CEO Andrea Pininfarina back in 2008 and the loss of design contracts to internal design studios.
Since then the company has teetered on the edge of bankruptcy but a number of measures is helping turn things around.
Managers at Pininfarina recently downsized the company by cutting loss-making car manufacturing units and focusing on the design side of things.
The company was also able to form a debt restructuring deal with its lenders that provided it with additional time to pay back its loans and freed up some much-needed cash. This has allowed Pininfarina to expand into new markets, especially China, which is already the single biggest market for new cars and soon will be the biggest for new car designs too.
"The company's debt restructuring enables us to say for the first time in five years that our survival is no longer at risk," Chairman Paolo Pininfarina, the grandson of the family-controlled group's founder Battista Farina, revealed to Reuters.
It must be noted that Pininfarina still expects to make an operating loss in 2012, and will only earn a net profit because it will benefit from a one-time gain of around 45 million euros (approximately $57 million).
