Shares in Vokswagen’s heavy truck subsidiary, Traton have been hit badly n recent weeks following the company’s cautious sales outlook for the commercial vehicle market in 2025 and amid a weak global economy.
The market has sent shares in Traton falling over the past week, with its subsidiaries including Swedish unit Scania tumbling around five per cent in ructions that spooked investors and which also saw its counterparts such as Daimler Truck and Volvo also suffer on the Bourses of Europe and America
Traton, like Daimler has forecast that its sales could range from a drop of five per cent to an optimistic growth of fiver per cent in 2025 with an operating return on sales of between 7.5 and 8.5 per cent, with the company expecting a stronger truck market in the second half of the year.
In contrast Traton said it did not see a significant impact from U.S. tariffs on imports from Mexico in the short term, even though 65 per cent of the trucks it supplied to the United States last year were assembled at its Mexican Navistar plant.
European truck makers’ shares have risen this year on hopes for higher order books ahead of the flagging of U.S. tariffs coming into effect, decisions to move more production to the Unites States and an improving European outlook.
Europe’s truck makers, which dominate the global heavy truck market on its home continent and also U.S. both North and South America, struggled through 2024 with falling sales, following the pent-up demand from the pandemic downturn, an occurrence which drove them to record sales highs in 2023.
In January VolvoHQ in Sweden reported a strong order intake for the fourth quarter of 202 , which some predicted could be a sign of a brightening outlook for the European truck market.
Traton also reported that its orders in the fourth-quarter of 2024 were also up but the German-headquartered group stopped short of declaring a turnaround in Europe.
Analysts said Traton’s profitability metric rose to 9.2 per cent in 2024, exceeding its 2023 figures the company said, thanks mainly to efficiency measures it had taken, even though its vehicle sales volumes fell.
Traton which also owns the MAN truck brand, increased its dividend by 13 per cent giving investors a total payout of $AUD 1.45 billion (€ 850 million euros), most of which will go to parent company Volkswagen which owns almost 90 percent of Traton shares.
Traton declared that sales of electric vehicles dropped by almost a 20 per cent, which saw EVs’ share of total overall sales fall from from 0.6 per cent to just 0.5 per cent, which some analysts say may increase the risk of Traton not meeting its carbon emission reduction targets.
The Traton results come as Volkswagen undergoes a major restructuring with thousands of job cuts in Germany due to shrinking European demand, rising competition from China and uncertainties around the EV transition.
