Equipment

Daimler Truck team grows more positive on sales outlook

May 10, 2023

Demand remains strong but CFO Jochen Goetz said the manufacturer still faces some supply chain constraints, including more cyberattacks.

Geert De Lombaerde

A strong start to 2023 has given the leadership team at Daimler Truck Holding AG confidence to guide their full-year North American sales forecast to the upper half of the range they laid out two months ago.

Speaking to analysts on a conference call discussing Daimler Truck’s first-quarter results, CFO Jochen Goetz said he and other executives view the prospects of the company’s Daimler Truck North America and Mercedes-Benz divisions more favorably than earlier this year. DTNA in the first quarter sold nearly 48,900 Freightliner and Western Star units, a 12% increase from early 2022, and grew revenues 27% to nearly $6.4 billion and its adjusted EBITDA a whopping 75% to roughly $740 million.

That performance, Goetz said, leads the Daimler Truck team to expect that full-year unit sales at DTNA will more likely be above 200,000, the midpoint of the 190,000-210,000 range they outlined in March. Importantly, Goetz said, the manufacturer has seen no signs of cancellations ticking up. By contrast, he added, he recently heard from two large customers that they intend to order more units in 2024 than Daimler Truck will deliver to them this year.

See also: DTNA CEO urges decarbonization in trucking to 'move at speed of right'

Still, not everything is sunshine and roses, which is why Daimler Truck’s executives aren’t raising their sales guidance. The continued recovery of the supply chain remains a key question mark despite what Goetz called a good first quarter, albeit one where suppliers showed cracks late on.

“It's not the chips anymore. It’s cyberattacks as well as a lot of other parts,” Goetz said. “So we are not sure that supply chain will be stable enough for higher volumes … If we avoid this roadblock, there’s upside potential.”

Globally, Daimler Truck posted a first-quarter net profit of about $870 million on sales of nearly $14.5 billion. Those numbers were up 189% and 25%, respectively, from the first three months of 2022.

The Frankfurt-listed shares of Daimler Truck (Ticker: DTG) fell 2% May 9. Over the past six months, they have risen slightly, growing the company’s market capitalization to about $26 billion.

About the Author

Geert De Lombaerde | Senior Editor

A native of Belgium, Geert De Lombaerde has more than two decades of experience in business journalism. Since 2021, he has written about markets and economic trends for Endeavor Business Media publications FleetOwner, Healthcare Innovation, IndustryWeek, Oil & Gas Journal, and T&D World.

With a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, he began his reporting career at the Business Courier in Cincinnati. He later was managing editor and editor of the Nashville Business Journal. Most recently, he oversaw the online and print products of the Nashville Post and reported primarily on Middle Tennessee’s finance sector and many of its publicly traded companies.