Auto rebound: Daimler and Volvo trucks surprise

Two of Europe’s big car and truck makers are offering surprising hopes of recovery.

Late Thursday (October 15), Daimler said third quarter pre-tax earnings hit almost 3.6 billion dollars.

That’s almost a billion better than analysts had forecast.

The Mercedes Benz-maker says demand for luxury cars has rebounded strongly.

That after a slump in sales pushed it to losses in the previous two quarters.

It’s now moving to cut costs too.

Moves include stopping building sedans in the U.S. to focus on more profitable SUVs instead.

Overall Daimler aims to cut fixed costs and other expenditure at Mercedes by more than 20% by 2025.

Hours after the German firm’s results, there was an arguably bigger surprise from truck maker Volvo.

The Swedish firm breezed past analyst estimates, posting a third-quarter operating profit of just over 800 million dollars.

After halting much production earlier in the year, Volvo said orders in the latest period were up 61% on the year.

That gave the company the confidence to reintroduce market forecasts.

It predicts European heavy truck registrations will fall 30% this year, with the U.S. down 35%, but with both seeing some recovery in 2021.

In early trade Friday (October 16) Daimler shares rose over 5 percent.

Volvo was up around 1 percent.