In the Corona crisis, Daimler seems to smell the morning air. The third quarter of the year was strong, even stronger than the same period last year. Now the group is raising its profit forecast.
With a strong third quarter behind them, the carmaker Daimler is now confident again for a little more than before. The Stuttgart-based company announced that it will no longer be possible to make up for the sales losses as a result of the corona pandemic, and sales will therefore also lag well behind 2019. In return, the operating result should at least reach the previous year's level of 4.3 billion euros – albeit weak, influenced by the billions of diesel contaminated sites. So far, Daimler had assumed that it would remain below the 2019 values everywhere due to the massive consequences of the corona crisis.
After the crisis had plunged Daimler deeply into the red in the second quarter, the company said it benefited in the third quarter from an unexpectedly rapid market recovery and also from its measures for more efficiency and cost discipline. "With this momentum, we are on the right track to make our business more weatherproof," said CFO Harald Wilhelm.
"The transformation of Daimler is, however, a long-distance race. We are keeping the pace high – focused and with a high level of discipline." The group is assuming that the economic framework conditions in the most important markets will continue to normalize and, above all, that there will be no further setbacks as a result of the pandemic, it said. The group wants to reduce fixed costs, investments and development expenditures in the car business by a fifth by the middle of the decade and to cut staff. The return should be increased to up to ten percent.
Daimler was able to sell almost 773,000 cars, trucks and buses in the third quarter, eight percent fewer than in the same period last year. At 40.3 billion euros, sales were seven percent below the prior-year quarter. The bottom line was that the shareholders made a profit of 2.05 billion euros – that is even 19 percent more than in the same period last year. Without the so-called deduction of minorities, the group result was 2.16 billion euros. Daimler announced the earnings before interest and taxes of just under 3.1 billion euros a week ago.
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