BERLIN (Reuters) -In the second quarter, Daimler Trucks’ earnings before interest and taxes went up 15% to 1.01 billion euros ($1.04 billion), which was a lot more than what analysts had expected. Revenues went up because of high demand and favorable exchange rate effects.
The company that makes trucks and buses had an adjusted return on sales of 8%, which is up from 8.1% last year. The sales were 12.1 billion euros, which was more than the 11.8 billion euros that six analysts polled by Refinitiv SmartEstimate thought they would be.
Daimler (OTC: DDAIF) Truck maintained its full-year forecast of 7-9% adjusted returns and 48-50 billion euros in sales. However, it lowered its expected adjusted returns for its Trucks Asia business from 3-5% to 1-3% because of how the second quarter in China affected the supply chain.
A company statement said that supply, not demand, is still the limiting factor, adding that the company still had a lot of orders waiting to be filled.
The statement said that bottlenecks in the supply chain would get better in the second half and that the company did not expect production to stop because Russia ran out of natural gas.
So far, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has had less of an effect on Daimler Trucks’ supply chain than it has on other truckmakers. This is partly because, unlike its competitors, it did not get wire harnesses from the country.
Traton and Iveco, two competitors, both saw their earnings drop in the second quarter, even though their sales went up. This was because of problems in the supply chain.
Daimler Truck has said more than once that it was sure it could pass on rising costs of energy and raw materials to customers because demand was high. However, the company’s Chief Financial Officer, Jochen Goetz, said that prices would go down again when costs go down.
($1 = 0.9720 euros)