(Reuters) -Volkswagen’s truck unit Traton guided for a tepid industrial car market in 2025 on Monday after persistent weak point in Europe, significantly in Germany, weighed on final 12 months’s outcomes.
“We count on the worldwide economic system to lose some momentum in 2025,” Traton stated in an announcement, including that it could proceed to deal with effectivity measures this 12 months.
The truck maker forecast 2025 gross sales growth in a spread of -5% to +5% and an working return on gross sales of between 7.5% and eight.5%. The outlook is topic to geopolitical developments, significantly in america, it stated.
The Scania proprietor’s shares had been up 1.3% in early Frankfurt commerce.
European truck makers’ shares have risen considerably this 12 months on hopes of upper order books forward of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs, selections to maneuver extra manufacturing to the Unites States and an enhancing European outlook.
Sweden’s Volvo in January reported robust order consumption for the fourth quarter of 2024, and a few analysts stated this is perhaps an indication of brightening outlook for the European truck market.
Traton’s adjusted working return on gross sales, its fundamental profitability metric, rose to 9.2% in 2024, exceeding each the 2023 determine and its forecast, though that was primarily because of effectivity measures whereas car gross sales fell.
Annual gross sales and adjusted working consequence had been steady at 47.47 billion euros ($51.47 billion) and 4.38 billion euros, respectively.
Gross sales of electrical automobiles (EV) dropped by 17% to 1,739 items offered in 2024, decreasing EVs’ share in total gross sales from 0.6% to 0.5%. Nonetheless, incoming EV orders jumped by 60% to about 4,000 vans and vans, Traton stated.
Waning EV gross sales improve the chance of Traton not assembly carbon emission discount targets, it added.
European truck makers struggled by final 12 months amid falling gross sales, after pent-up demand following the pandemic drove them to report highs in 2023.
Traton’s outcomes come as its mother or father Volkswagen undergoes a significant restructuring with 1000’s of job cuts in Germany resulting from shrinking European demand, rising competitors from China and uncertainties across the EV transition.
($1 = 0.9223 euros)
(Reporting by Andrey Sychev and Amir Orusov in Gdansk; modifying by Milla Nissi)
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