German Manager Magazin: MAN rips VW subsidiary Traton into the red 0000 001

The Volkswagen commercial vehicle holding company Traton cannot rule out a loss for the full year due to customers’ reluctance to buy. It is new Traton boss Matthias Gründler (54) is confident of a certain recovery in the second half of the year. “As our business has slowly stabilized after the sharp slump in April, we expect sales to gradually recover in the current quarter unless the number of new infections increases again,” said the manager. For the full year, the group from MAN, Scania and the South American Volkswagen Caminhões e Ônibus cannot rule out an operating loss due to the expected “drastic drop in sales”, said Traton CFO Christian Schulz (43).

In the second quarter, orders for trucks and buses fell 41 percent year-on-year to 33,270 vehicles. Sales fell 38 percent to EUR 4.4 billion because sales already fell by more than half. The operating business posted a loss of EUR 382 million after a profit of EUR 585 million a year ago. Bottom line, too, Traton slipped into the red and posted a loss of € 385 million after a profit of € 408 million a year ago.

Looking at the half-year, the subsidiary MAN tore the entire commercial vehicle group deep into the red. MAN posted a loss of EUR 387 million after an operating profit of EUR 253 million in the same period of the previous year. This resulted in an operating loss of 220 million euros in the Traton Group. A year earlier, it was a profit of more than a billion euros. Traton’s South America subsidiary, which operates under the Volkswagen brand, now posted a loss of ten million euros. The Scania brand alone was in the black with an operating profit of EUR 221 million.

At MAN, the company is currently planning to cut jobs by possibly thousands. However, there had been a dispute between workers and the ex-Traton boss Andreas Renschler (62), who was in office until mid-July. Renschler then had to vacate the chair for Gründler.

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