Daimler's truck division wants to attract new investors

Daimler's truck division, which is about to go public, wants to attract new investors with more ambitious profit targets. The operating return should be in the double digits by 2025 - "assuming strong market conditions", announced the Stuttgart truck manufacturer. With an average operating profit of around six percent of sales, the world market leader for heavy trucks lagged behind the best-in-class Scania in recent years. The Swedes often cracked the ten percent mark. In the future, Daimler intends to achieve six to seven percent with the cyclical business if the global economy is in poor shape and with good double-digit margins. To achieve this, fixed costs are to be reduced by 15 percent worldwide by 2025 compared to 2019. According to analysts, Daimler's weak point is Europe, where costs are still too high after several rounds of savings. It is supposed to be directed by a former Scania manager: Karin Radström, European boss since February, spread a relentless stocktaking to analysts and investors: "Our market share fell, the numbers went in the wrong direction. We lost contact with our customers. Our cost base rose, but we failed to grow sales at the same pace. " The Swabians would have concentrated too much on technology and market shares and in part worked past the customer, the very keenly calculating entrepreneurs in the transport industry. "It was more from the inside out than from the outside in." Now they will push the austerity course already taken with the goal postulated in 2019 of saving EUR 300 million in personnel costs by 2022 and reduce the "excessive" administrative costs.