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Despite the Corona crisis and a historic collapse in the global car market, the Daimler Group closed 2020 with a solid profit.
Although the company was able to sell 15 percent fewer vehicles than in the previous year, sales fell by eleven percent.
Nevertheless, the pre-tax profit (EBIT) rose by 53 percent to 6.6 billion euros.
After taxes, the group earned four billion euros in 2020 - 48 percent more than in 2019. The results reflected "great progress in cost efficiency," said CEO Ola Källenius.
"In addition, based on a strong product mix and good price enforcement, we were able to achieve a significant improvement in profitability, especially in the second half of the year."
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A year of major changes has now begun for the group.
After the stress of the crisis, Källenius wants to catch up with electromobility and the digitization of the car, spin off the Daimler Trucks truck division into its own company - and reduce the extreme distance to new competitors such as Tesla on the stock exchange.
The then independent car company will be called Mercedes-Benz again.
In addition, the Daimler truck group is also to become a Dax company.
When it comes to electrifying the fleet, competitors like Jaguar have now overtaken the group with steep announcements.
The British brand is expected to become all-electric as early as 2025.
Mercedes-Benz is currently planning to equip a quarter of all vehicles with an electric motor by 2025 and half of all vehicles by 2030.
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Plug-in hybrids count towards these values.
But the pace of change is likely to accelerate.
"I can very well imagine that we will correct these goals upwards," said Källenius in advance of the "Handelsblatt".
Analyst Arndt Ellinghorst from Bernstein Research considers the Daimler share to be undervalued.
The headline of his short study before the announcement of the new company forecast: "The fun has only just begun." According to the company, sales, turnover and profit in 2021 should be significantly above the previous year's level.
The current bottleneck in the semiconductor industry will affect sales especially in the first quarter.
However, it is "currently to be assumed that lost production volume will be made up again by the end of the year," says the group's announcement.
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The decisive factor for the surprisingly good figures for the crisis year were the strong sales in the fourth quarter.
Business for Mercedes-Benz was particularly good in China.
The luxury car market there has grown vigorously despite the crisis.
Of a total of 2,087,200 Mercedes brand cars sold, around 775,000 were sold in China.
Ferdinand Dudenhöffer from the Center Automotive Research calls the Mercedes figures “picture book profits”.
According to his calculations, in the fourth quarter of 2020 the company achieved a pre-tax profit of almost 5,000 euros per car sold.
"Mercedes shows: the classic car manufacturers are back," says Dudenhöffer.
"The Tesla hype contrasts with the come-back story."
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