Daimler Truck Holding AG (MBG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, everyone, and welcome to our Daimler Truck Strategy Day. This is an exciting day and an exciting year for Daimler and for Daimler Truck. As you know, we are in transformation, and we are pulling off some historic changes for our company. There's a fundamental technology shift going on in this industry, and we intend to lead it especially in terms of electrification and software. For us, this comes with the definition and execution of a new strategy. And to accelerate all of this, we're also revamping our structure. Taken together, these steps will significantly improve our company's performance, and that's why we're looking forward to tell you more about the road map for Daimler Truck today. What we intend to do is clear. We are building 2 independent pure-play companies. Mercedes-Benz will be the world's preeminent luxury car business, committed to leading in electric drive and car software. Daimler Truck will accelerate its path towards zero emissions as the world's largest truck and bus producer and technology leader. Going forward, there is so much opportunity. But we're all well aware that greater independence also comes with great responsibility to raise our financial performance, to accelerate on our strategic course and to create sustainable value. I have full confidence in the financial and operational strength of our 2 vehicle divisions. And with regard to Daimler Truck, I'm convinced that independent management and governance will allow them to operate even faster, invest more ambitiously, target growth and cooperation and be significantly more competitive. How are we moving forward? Short answer, we are on track. We're making significant progress on all major cornerstones of this project. I want to mention just a few. The independent governance for trucks is well underway. The carve-out of central functions is moving along. And we're on time for the planned majority listing by the end of the year. The same goes for the EGM this fall. I can't wait to see what the team is going to make out of it. With this, I'll hand it over to the CEO of Daimler Truck, Martin Daum. Before that, let's have a look at the short video. [Presentation]

Thank you, Ola, for the introductory remarks. Hello, everybody, and welcome to this first Daimler Truck Strategy Day. The film you have just seen tries to sum up what Daimler Truck stands for as a company and what we want to become as we make our way towards an equity market listing and towards public life. And I want to start by explaining that leading Daimler Truck towards an independent future as a publicly listed company has long been a personal mission for me. I believe it can operate most efficiently as an independent company. And I believe the scrutiny, the intensity and the discipline that the capital markets will apply to us will be a profoundly good thing. We are committed to confront our weaknesses. We are very serious about making hard decisions. It will bring rigor to our capital allocation, and it will raise our financial performance. It will make us a better company for our customers. It will make us a better place to work for our employees. So I'm looking forward to this journey. I'm grateful for you all tuning in and joining us here today. I'm looking forward to telling you more about this company and the great new management team that we have assembled. I'm looking forward to your questions. And in the months and years ahead, I'm looking forward to meeting with you, discussing with you, welcoming some of you as shareholders and learning from you about what you expect of us as a listed company. Let me turn to my first slide, which tries to summarize our strengths, our weaknesses and our opportunities as an independent company. Our strengths are very easy to describe. We are a true global #1 in terms of size, reach and scale. In a normal year, we sell over 0.5 million trucks globally. We have powerful brands that customers value for what they stand for, successful across all major continents. We are a technology leader in combustion engine, a technology leader in safety technology and increasingly in zero-emission powertrains. And we are absolutely a powerhouse in North America with a 40% share and the leader in profitability terms with strong double-digit margins. So far, so good. But we also need to acknowledge our challenges. In fact, we have decided today to spend a lot of time talking about our challenges. We want to acknowledge them. We want to explain them to you, and then we want to show you how we are going to fix them. And our challenges are substantial. Chief amongst them is our failure to turn scale, the scale that I just talked about, into enduring and financial success in all regions. We've had some successes in this regard. We have leveraged technology across continents and business units, for instance, using powertrain technology developed in Europe in our North American products. We are deploying our electric solution for safety sensors and connectivity across our global product portfolio. But overall, our regional financial results tell a story. This weakness in Europe, Asia and Brazil, we have inconsistent regional profitability, and we must address this. That leads me to our opportunities. We have an opportunity to fundamentally raise the game of this company. So how are we going to do this? In a recently announced move, we decided to change our organizational structure. As we get ready for public life and as we get ready to raise performance, we needed a new approach. So we have decided to give each region more independence and more entrepreneurial freedom and greater product development responsibility. And then we will focus each region on targeting its local profit benchmark. In North America, we are already the benchmark. In other regions, we are far from it. And this needs to change. You are all industry experts. So you know what this means. In Europe, the benchmark is double-digit margins. In Asia, it is high single-digit margins. And in Brazil, we have competitors who are profitable, but we are not. Every region must target its benchmark. This is nonnegotiable, and every region must deliver. How will we combine this with our technology strength and scale? Simple. We will focus on pulling synergy from our technology portfolio, not pushing them into regions. We will use the scale we'll soon have in battery electric and later fuel cell and deploy that scale globally. And we will also use technology to grow our services. So we are aiming for the best of both worlds, maximum customer proximity and entrepreneurship in our region and focused engineering power for future technologies. And I will say it again, as part of this strategy, every region must deliver. So our mission as an independent company is clear. It's very simple. First, we need to reset profitability. Using a targeting regional approach, we will raise our financial performance. Second, at the time of immense industry change and by leveraging our scale, we intend to lead the way to zero emissions. We are going to talk a lot about that today. And I hope we are going to surprise you with the extent of our ambition and the precision and detail of our plan. So that's it. It's that simple. We are going to reset profitability and will lead the way to zero in pursuit of profit and technology leadership. Let me tell you a little bit more about those 2 pillars before I introduce you to our great new team and then over to my fantastic colleagues. This is critical. This is essential to our future as an independent company. This is our responsibility. Here, you can see our strategic financial goals. They are self-explanatory. We will target regional benchmark profits; focus on the highest return segments, this means a further pivot towards heavy trucks; systematically lower our fixed and variable cost; lowering our breakeven point and grow service revenues to reduce our vulnerability to industry cycles. So they're the goals, we must deliver on them. Turning now to the second pillar, leading the way to zero emissions. As well as resetting profitability, we are also aiming to lead the way to zero. As my American friends like to say, we are going all-in on zero-emission trucks. I have said that we are committed to raise profitability. We owe that to our shareholders. But it is also our responsibility to reduce our carbon footprint and lead this industry to zero emissions. We owe that to society and to the planet. And we will deliver on that promise in a way that is profitable and creates value for our shareholders. With the right technology strategy, with bold decision and with focused execution, we can lead the way to zero and improve profitability. That is our goal. I briefly want to tell you about the key decision we have made as a company when it comes to zero emission. And that is that we need to pursue a dual-track strategy with both battery electric and fuel cell trucks. The customer needs both, the industry needs both, the world needs both, and we are going to develop and deliver both. Let me explain. Battery electric trucks are real. Battery electric trucks are convincing. And the energy density and cost of batteries has developed so fast that long-range electric trucks are viable. We are already selling electric trucks today, and our electric trucks and buses have driven more than 1 million miles in customer hands, already providing us with invaluable information to improve them further. We have some great new heavy-duty electric trucks about to be delivered into customer hands. We have additional long-range heavy trucks in advanced development. And we have ambitious technology plans for the ultimate next-generation battery electric truck that our CTO, Andreas Gorbach, will tell you about later. What's great with all-electric trucks is that they are great and easy to drive. What's especially great with battery electric trucks is that you can deploy them in small quantities fast. And infrastructure for those trucks can be built up fast, and we are kickstarting such an infrastructure ourselves with high-power chargers. But we also need hydrogen trucks because the electricity grid can support the charging of electric trucks only up to a certain share of the fleet. But we do not believe that the electricity grid can support a pure 100% electric truck fleet. The transportation industry will need a second energy source, and this is where hydrogen comes in. We believe hydrogen will be part of the future energy mix. We believe in the hydrogen economy, and we know hydrogen trucks work. Fuel cell trucks have an energy density that is superior to lithium ion batteries and so are better for long haul. And we have confidence in a rapid reduction in cost. In fuel cell technology, our engineers are targeting a dramatic reduction in cost that can make an hydrogen truck cheaper than a battery truck. So we can get the product cost down. And thanks to our cellcentric joint venture with Volvo, we can also limit the development cost while adding scale with the volumes of another major OEM. The challenge with hydrogen is starting this infrastructure. There are massive investments necessary by the energy companies, just like today in our carbon-based economy. But once they are done, they will scale easily, supporting hundred thousands of trucks and ultimately millions of trucks out on our roads. We intend to help kick start this infrastructure. We will tell you more about that later in this event with some exciting news. We have heard others questioning hydrogen trucks and put all the emphasis on electric trucks. We believe this is shortsighted. Both technologies will be needed, and we intend to lead the industry in both technologies. So I have explained our strengths and our weaknesses. I have explained our opportunities and our new regional-focused organization. And I have promised that we will unlock the potential of Daimler Truck for you, our shareholders. But now I want to introduce to you the management team that I'm counting on to deliver and unlock that value. Let's turn to the next slide. Here, you see our top management team. This is a team that has seen very significant change in recent months. We have assembled a new Board for Daimler Truck that I believe has the skills and the perspective and the energy to deliver a step change in performance. In the rest of the event, key members of the team are going to explain Daimler Truck's regions and technologies to you. Jürgen, John, Karin, Hartmut and Andreas are all going to talk to you today. You are going to witness their passion, their expertise and their commitment. I'm honored and blessed to lead such a great team. I would like the team to spend as much time as possible with investors and analysts, getting your input, learning from your perspectives and bringing that capital market message back into the organization. With that, I'm going to hand over to Jochen Goetz, our CFO, to talk in more detail about our financial ambitions, then I will see you again later. Thank you.

Hello, everybody. Welcome also from my side. I am Jochen Goetz, CFO of Daimler Trucks. And just like Martin stated in his opening comments, while we are excited about our independent future and listing, we are not underestimating the demands and challenges of life as a public company. There is much hard work ahead, but we are ready for this work. We are ready for the scrutinies we will face, ready to provide transparency that you require, and we are ready to lift the financial performance of this company. And let's be clear, we absolutely do need to raise our financial performance. We know that our financial results in the last years were not where they should be. You will see that on my first slide. This is our starting point. Our EBIT margin is simply not competitive with the benchmark. Our volatility of performance is excessive due to a too high breakeven point and too low share of service revenues. While we are the profit leader in North America, our other regions are not strong enough. We need to fix this. The good news is we have the blueprint for how to do that. Daimler Trucks North America, strong market position, excellent customer relationship and benchmark in profitability. But on the other side, to be candid, in Europe, Asia and Brazil, we have our challenges. Given the size, Europe is the most important region and has the highest upside potential. We are focused on fixing it with new leadership from Karin Rådström and a comprehensive turnaround plan underway. So we recognize and acknowledge our problems. And we realize that our shareholders will demand much stronger performance. So how do we tackle these challenges? First, our most important challenge is to streamline our fixed cost base. We aim to reduce our fixed costs by 15% by no later than 2025. We have already achieved a lot in this regard in 2020. And yes, you can debate, the reason for that is the pandemic and the corresponding onetime measures everyone has taken. Some of that is true, but on top, we actively installed some very strong strategic initiatives to lower our overall fixed cost level. At the Capital Market Day, back in 2019, we already announced our personnel cost reduction target in Europe, and we are well underway, money and time wise. But besides personnel costs, we are also engaged in systematic efforts across the businesses to reduce complexity in our products, in our structure and in our organization. Another major step for that is the recently announced organizational change to give more entrepreneurial freedom to each region while reorganizing our resources on the truck technology side. We will be able to leverage technology globally and be more efficient in product management and R&D. For sure, we learned quite a lot during the pandemic. This cost focus spirit, we will keep also in the years to come. Based on what we have achieved so far and based on the initiative, which will be effective in the near future, we are very confident that we will achieve this target. So now let's focus on CapEx and on R&D. Same as on the fixed cost side, we will see a normalization effect in 2021. However, we will remain significantly below the level of 2019, and we will further reduce spending going forward. But what is necessary to achieve this 15% reduction target. First, we will even more focus on heavy-duty since this is known as the by far largest market segment with structurally higher profitability. It is our intention as a business to grow our revenue per unit by richer mix, high-quality products and services. Second, as another very strong initiative, we implemented active portfolio management. We will use that to identify the profit pools of the future and ensure smarter allocation of our capital. The overall reduction of CapEx and R&D is one ambition. But within the given budget, there will be also a significant shift from ICE towards zero-emission and autonomous. And the last point on this slide is really key. We are committed to absolute budget for CapEx and R&D in the future, independent from the market environment we are operating in. As I just said, we want to increase our revenue per unit via mix and product and grow the quality of our revenue via services. This is really important. We don't want to grow the top line by fighting, by market share, but rather by delivering compelling products and intensifying our relationship with our customers. We want to increase our recurrent revenues and find long-term enduring customer relationship. So now let's talk about services as one of our most promising growth paths. When I talk about services, I first mean the traditional ones like spare parts and maintenance, but I also mean financial services like leasing and customer-specific insurances. And I mean the very fast-growing new services in the field of digitalization, electric and autonomous. Based on our new global connectivity backbone, we are developing tailor-made services for every region and for every customer going forward. And for me, the most exciting area are the services regarding zero-emission trucks, starting with battery management and ending with the question, what do we do with the battery after the first life. So overall, the growth potential we see on services is significant. And with that, we aim to increase our revenues on our service portfolio from around about 30% today, up to roughly 50% in 2030. Now let's talk more in detail about the financial performance of our regions. I know there have been questions from analysts and investors about how Daimler Truck will disclose financials going forward. And right now, I can give you the answer on that. In future, we will report 5 segments. First, Trucks North America, including the very strong brands, Freightliner, Western Star and Thomas Built Buses. Second, the Mercedes-Benz Trucks brand in Europe and in Latin America. Third, Trucks Asia, including our operations in China, in Japan, in Indonesia and in India. Then the Mercedes-Benz branded bus with the main operations in Europe and in Brazil. And finally, Daimler Truck Financial Services. And my overarching message here is clear. We must improve the financial performance of many of the segments. We will have a no excuse us policy. Every region must deliver. Let me explain in detail. Obviously, there are 2 very decisive segments. That's Trucks North America and that's Mercedes-Benz Trucks. In North America, our main job is to reinforce our very strong position and to sustain discipline. And even if it looks like we already have achieved the maximum here, we still see an upside potential, especially with our latest launch product, the tailor-made vocational truck. So our challenge is more at the Mercedes-Benz Trucks. Here, we have to improve dramatically. We must lower the breakeven point profoundly and increase our revenue share on traditional and digital services. In Brazil, we must reverse our losses in a rather weak market environment, finalize the renewal of our product portfolio and significantly lower the overall cost. Asia, we see as the region with the greatest growth opportunity midterm. First of all, in China, with our Mercedes-Benz branded heavy-duty truck made in China for China. And second, with the light-duty business, where we see opportunities, especially in Southeast Asia. Now let's briefly talk about the bus, despite the currently very difficult situation. Well, the coach market in Europe has basically stopped due to the pandemic. The business itself is in a good shape. And then we will welcome our latest member in the Daimler Trucks and Buses family. After the separation, we will have our own Financial Services business, where we want to build up a high return on equity business. I know you are all very curious about the regional profitability. But please bear with me. I cannot disclose them today. We are still in the process of preparing all the financial numbers for our new segments after the spin. And I promise that at your second Capital Market Day in Q4, where we will focus on financial performance, we will give you detailed segment-specific financials. To sum that up, what does it mean for our overall financial ambition? You all are experts on this industry. So you know that a truck business is a very cyclical one. Having that in mind, we decided not to shoot for 1 single point, but rather focus on 3 different scenarios. The rainy scenario is very much in line with what we have seen last year. The so-called fair weather scenario in the midfield reflects a kind of an average. And then all the way to the right, there is a sunny scenario. This scenario is based on rather strong market conditions. Important here, regardless of the weather scenario or market conditions, we will stick to our 15% reduction targets in regard to fixed costs as well as of CapEx and R&D. What does it mean in terms of profitability? We are working to prepare a floor where we can achieve at least 6% return on sales, even in the rainy scenario. In average, we shoot for 8% to 9%. And in sunny conditions, which we have seen already several times in the last decade, we aim to deliver more than 10%. That is our target, and we will work relentlessly to make it happen. But what's needed to do so. We must focus on bringing our fixed costs down and on improving our aftermarket performance. And on top of that, we will address even more levers to improve our profitability. Material cost efficiency, efficiency in operations, product quality and also, very important, establishing our new business model in China. Regarding cash, one of our strengths in the past was always to convert our EBIT into strong cash flow, and we will continue to aim for a cash conversion rate between 80% and 100% in all scenarios. So this is our answer on the overall financial ambition and how we will create value for our shareholders. And as I said before, we will give you a more detailed financial guidance in Q4, also including regional profitabilities and regional targets. In addition, ahead of the spin, we will give full details of our dividend and shareholder return philosophy, which is going to be a priority for us. Before I hand over to John, I would like to repeat once again, we want to achieve benchmark in profitability. And for that, each and every region, and I mean each and every region must deliver. [Presentation]

Hello. I'm John O'Leary, CEO of Daimler Trucks North America. Thanks for your interest today. After spending Q4 of 2020 and part of Q1 of 2021 in Germany, launching the Mercedes-Benz Trucks transformation and as interim CEO, I recently returned to assume the leadership of DTNA. I have a long history serving in various senior leadership positions here in North America, CEO of Thomas Built School Buses, Head of Aftermarket, and more recently, as Chief Financial Officer. This is a business I know intimately. In this time, we have grown our business to become the undisputed leader with 40% market share and, most importantly, #1 in both absolute profit and return on sales. I'm excited to speak to you today about how we leverage our great strength to grow even stronger in the years ahead. My plan for the future is to expand both our market position and our profitability at Daimler Trucks North America. We will do so in an efficient, smart but most importantly, effective way. We will further grow our top line, while at the same time, improving efficiencies to keep our industry benchmark cost position. As you saw in the video you just watched, we operate a large enterprise in North America, offering everything from electric school buses to the industry-leading Class 8 truck, The Freightliner Cascadia. And among the nation's largest fleets, you can see our unrivaled strength reflected in our 58% market share. But as you can also see, we still have plenty of room for growth in the profitable small fleet and vocational segments. Despite the normal fluctuations of industry cycles, we continue to dominate in Class 6 to 8. Second place is 25% to 26%. We've shown this remarkable resilience and strength, thanks to several key factors. One, by offering industry-leading technology to enhance safety, fuel efficiency and productivity. We leverage in-house global solutions where we can and improve our margins as a result. Take, for example, our proprietary Detroit engines, which were spec'd in 94% of all vehicles we sell. Second, our flexible manufacturing network incorporates 9 locations in the U.S. and Mexico, allowing us to scale up or down as the market demands in a very cost-efficient manner. Third, we have the largest dealership network in North America, serving 3 vehicle brands, all equally dedicated to satisfying our customers by keeping their productive assets up and running. Leading me to the final point here about our strength. It is derived from an absolute unwavering commitment to customer centricity. Their vehicles are assets, expensive assets purchased from us to generate revenue for them. Most of the time, the cargo that rides on those trucks is worth more than the truck itself. The driver shortage is well documented. And it isn't unusual for drivers to just walk away from a broken-down truck the second or third time it interferes with earning a living. Customers know and even accept that occasionally trucks break down in the severe duty cycles to which they're exposed. But what becomes critical and a competitive advantage is how quickly we can get that valuable driver and their valuable cargo back in operation again. We bring an unwavering commitment to supporting every customer, every truck, every time. So looking forward, what are the key items we'll be focusing on. In short, improved profitability, driven by cost control and increased revenue growth. This includes furthering our technology leadership. Being part of the global Daimler Truck organization, we have access to a wealth of technologies. Whether by in-house innovation or buying from suppliers at scale, we can put more purposeful innovation into our trucks than our competitors, allowing us to command a premium for our vehicles. Next, we will continue managing costs and leveraging our flexible manufacturing footprint. We are great operators. The truck business is cyclical. And we will account for fluctuations by remaining steadfast in our cost control measures in both fixed overhead and variable costs. As the pandemic has taught us, our discipline here, especially navigating recent supply chain disruptions, serves us well in good times and even more so in times of uncertainty. Moreover, we can maintain positive cash flow and profitability even down to a 165,000 unit market, which hasn't happened in our professional lifetimes. Lastly, we will continue to improve on our unparalleled market position. Our business strength has been cultivated over many years. However, this is not a given. We are humble and still very hungry. We've forged many strong partnerships with the most sophisticated and demanding customer base of large fleet customers. They challenge us every day to be better. We will continue our uncompromising customer focus for those customers while doing the same for new ones in the vocational segment. Let me provide some specific examples of what this continuing use of our strength looks like in practice. You heard me reference it earlier, and you saw my colleague, David Carson, mention it in the intro video, but our vocational focus is coming at a perfect time. Leveraging the global technology toolkit of Daimler Trucks to realize synergies and cost savings, while tailoring for the unique DTNA markets, we recently introduced the all-new Western Star 49X. These trucks were built for the most demanding work imaginable, accessing oil derricks, logging camps, pouring concrete and tackling all types of construction work. I've been around this industry long enough to know that sometimes you're good, sometimes you're lucky and every once in a while, you get to be both. And that is exactly where we stand now as we have our sight set on achieving 45% share of the vocational market, which means incrementally growing our share by 15% in a 130,000 unit market. While the 49X is arriving now, as the result of a $350 million investment we made 4 years ago, it's just the beginning of a series of products aimed at this segment, just as infrastructure spending is likely to increase in the U.S. Although we can't take credit for this amazing timing, we do plan to take full advantage of it. On the subject of our aftermarket business, we are wholly committed to further advancing our KPI of getting customer trucks back on the road in 24 hours or less when repairs are required. And we'll continue to leverage our subscription-based connectivity services to keep increasing our customers' productivity. Next, while you'll hear more later on the subject of electrification, let me briefly touch on the fact that we have already started delivering battery electric Thomas Built Buses to school districts across North America, and those numbers will only continue to grow. In the Class 6 to 8 segments, our Freightliner eCascadia and eM2 are slated to begin starter series production in late 2022. We already have 40 fully operational development units in customer hands, from which we obtain operational data, customer input and afford our customers an opportunity to gain experience with the new technology. Just last month, we opened the order books on these important products, and we're already off to a strong start in filling our backlog. Lastly, while the sight of electric semis and school buses captures a lot of imagination and attention, I'd be remiss not to mention our battery electric walk-in van chassis from Freightliner's Custom Chassis division. This is the right vehicle to capitalize on the surge in e-commerce spending and subsequent last-mile delivery. They are quiet, they are efficient, and they are capable, and we will begin deliveries late this year. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, is our relentless dedication to developing industry-leading safety technology. While you'll hear more on this from Martin shortly, I'll mention that this is a nonnegotiable here at Daimler Trucks North America, and something we take great pride in delivering to our customers. In conclusion, these are just a few examples of how we continue to leverage our industry leadership position to drive future growth, fantastic profit, and unmatched customer satisfaction. We are strong and getting stronger. [Presentation]

Thank you, John. Hi, and nice to meet you. As mentioned in the video, I'm Karin Rådström, and I'm the new Head of Mercedes-Benz Trucks. During my first 100 days, I've had the chance to study the business, meet people, understand our strengths and weaknesses, and have started to come to some preliminary conclusions about what we need to do. So I wanted to take this opportunity to share with you my 100-day observations. Before coming here, I spent 17 years in the industry working at one of the competitors, and I've obviously had the chance to study Mercedes-Benz as an outsider. I've always looked up to Mercedes as a tough competitor. Mercedes is known in the market for its low total cost of ownership and as a leader in safety and in technology. But even as an outsider, I've seen the company lose position in the last couple of years, and I could even identify some of the likely issues behind that. But I chose to join this company anyway because I believe in the potential of Mercedes-Benz Trucks. And because I think we have everything in place to do a powerful turnaround. And now when I've been here for a while, I definitely haven't changed my mind. I honestly feel even more confident after my first 100 days, and I'll explain why. But let's start with the big pictures. Here, you see the facts about the European business. When we go back to the early parts of the last decades, we were really at benchmark profitability and had double-digit margins. But in the last years, we haven't delivered good performance. Our market share has declined, and our financial figures have been going in the wrong direction and also customer satisfaction. On the right side of the slide here, you'll see the results of a benchmark study which was done by a consultant company. They interviewed a very large number of truck buyers of all brands about their perception of us and of our competitors. And the results show that amongst the major 7 brands in Europe, we're #4 on product, #5 on sales and #6 on service. It's obviously not a positioning we're proud of. I think our performance decline can be boiled down into basically 2 fundamental problems: to some extent, we lost touch with our customers; and secondly, our cost base increased but we weren't able to increase our revenues at the same pace. Now let me tell you how we're tackling these challenges. We're taking action to become more customer-driven. On the product side, we need to connect our engineers with our customers. I've lived in many different parts of the world and I met many engineers, and I can assure you that at Mercedes-Benz, we have great engineers. So that's not our problem. But we have been developing our trucks with a little bit too much focus on technical perfection and sometimes not understanding our customers' needs or what they're actually willing to pay for, a little bit too much from the inside out rather than from the outside in. So we're shifting our processes around to involve our customers much more in the early stages of development and to test things early before everything is finished and it's too late to make changes. And I think the electric actors, or as we call it the e-actors, is a really good example. We've had a fleet of vehicles in the market for over 2 years in 4 different countries, trialed by many different customers. The feedback they've been giving us has been used to develop our series product, which is coming soon. On the sales side, some of our customers are telling us that it's a little bit complicated to deal with Mercedes-Benz. They tell us that we have a big organization with sometimes too many people involved and that it takes us too long even just to make an offer. So we have to simplify this, and we're doing it through improvements in processes, better IT, better and quicker back-office support and by making sure our salespeople are well-trained and up-to-date with our product portfolio. We're also far from the benchmark when it comes to services. And obviously, every day that a truck stands in our workshop instead of working is time wasted for our customer. Here and now, we are increasing our focus on retail. We're investing in retail, and we're improving our network locations both on our own and together with our partners. It's our retail colleagues who meet our customers every day. The rest of us sitting here in Stuttgart, in the head office or wherever, have to view ourselves as one big support team to our guys and girls in the frontline. We need to make sure that we're giving them the prerequisites to do their job by improving spare parts availability, making IT systems easier to work in, improving service method, having reliable delivery dates, just to give a couple of examples. Another very concrete example of a shift is that we have changed our metrics around from being very market-share-based, which doesn't always drive the right behaviors, to focusing on customer satisfaction and on how we can continuously make our customers more successful. We're also running an intense and systematic performance plan aimed at reducing cost across the board in almost every category. We have excessive fixed overhead costs. Within Daimler Truck, we can obviously benchmark with the other regions in the group, and we can also compare ourselves since we know the levels of our competitors to them. And while I don't want to share the precise figures with you, I can tell you that we're not the benchmark. Actually, we're a long way off. And if we want benchmark EBIT margins, which we do, then we need to lower the fixed costs to benchmark levels as well. The cost reduction plans were already progressing before I joined, but now that I'm on board, I intend to accelerate them. We need to go faster, and we need to be more systematic. So I brought in fresh expertise to advise on the restructuring, and we brought everything into one program. We're now beginning to reconsider and revisit every aspect of the business cost structure, in manufacturing, in logistics, in product cost, in non-personnel overhead, in sales, in admin, in distribution. All of these areas are under review, and we're working on a plan that will drive cost down item by item, directly linked to the P&L into our cash flow performance to ensure that we have benchmark costs and therefore, benchmark profitability. We'll give you more details on this in our next Capital Markets Day towards the end of the year. By the way, in terms of cost reduction and spending where we need to spend, I think the split of the truck and car companies will be helpful because we will be a much more focused business. I'm absolutely confident that this will help us raise our performance because from my own experience, I can tell you what a focused high-performance truck business looks like and I know what it's capable of. Now over to Brazil, another key market. We've been present in Brazil since the 1950s, and I truly believe in Brazil for the long term. Also here, we've had incredible success some years ago but with declining performance for the last couple of years. And while we managed to regain market share, we have not been able to grow profitability at the same rate. And our decline, I would say, is related both to our own performance and also to external factors like currency depreciation and political instability. And we obviously cannot change the external volatilities, but we can build a more robust and a more resilient business model. So now we have a comprehensive and holistic restructuring being implemented also there. We've phased out underperforming models such as the Atron and [ Aurion ], and we're introducing new products that are really fitting the needs of our Brazilian customers. We're also reviewing our dealer network performance and focusing on improving our revenues from services like fleet board, like extended warranty, Mercedes-Benz uptime. And we're also focusing on margin improvement, reduction of fixed costs. We're reviewing vertical integration and changing our value chain so that we will be less sensitive to currency fluctuations. We're confident that this will take us back to success also in this important region. So to summarize, after 100 days, I feel excited and I feel confident. Mercedes-Benz Trucks is under new management. We're setting a new strategy. We're focused on strict cost management, and we will be relentless about customer focus. Step-by-step, we're taking the action that's required to take Mercedes-Benz back on top, where it belongs, as a benchmark within Europe and in the world. And with that, I'll pass on to my colleague, Hartmut Schick. Over to you, Hartmut, after a short video. [Presentation]

Thank you, Karin, and welcome from Asia. My name is Hartmut Schick, and I'm the Head of Daimler Trucks Asia. I'm truly excited to share more about our story in this part of the world. Our aim in Asia is to grow profitability, access the opportunities that the region provides and maximize our cash and earnings contribution to the group. We have operations in Japan, in Indonesia and the rest of Southeast Asia, in China and in India. This diversity is a strength, and we are working hard to optimize our financial performance across the region. We have made progress in recent years, but there is still a distance to go. We are more profitable than some of the competitors, but we are not yet on the regional benchmark level, and that's our target because within Daimler Truck, every region must deliver. Let's start with our business with Mitsubishi Fuso. Mitsubishi Fuso is our commercial vehicle business centered in Japan but with extensive success across the Southeast Asian region. Customers know that the Fuso brand stands for Japanese quality. Thanks to our brand, localized production and very strong dealerships, we can provide tailored solutions to demanding markets. Our home market for Mitsubishi Fuso is Japan, the third biggest economy in the world. Last year, in Japan, we enjoyed a market share of 20.4% and are confident in growing this number further in the mid- and short term. We are very well-established in the stable Japanese market in all segments, including heavy duty, where our Super Great is the clear, fuel efficiency and automated driving leader. This is due to the global DNA of Daimler trucks. It is important to note that in Japan, a very substantial amount of our contribution is generated in the service and parts business. With modernized own retail branches by adding new working base and reducing our structural cost, we will further grow our downstream business, aggressively aiming to service the 4 million trucks and buses in operation. Indonesia, with a population of 273 million, is our second most important market for Fuso. We hold a very strong position here and currently enjoy a market share of about 50%. With our strong partners, we have a very capital-efficient and profitable joint venture structure. 220 dealers across the country with deep knowledge of local needs and culture as well as very high rate of localized parts are the basis for our ongoing success. Asia is our home turf, and we have a strong footprint in demanding markets where the accumulated share of non-Asian brands is well below 5%. Here, we are well positioned as Japanese brand. Overall, we are serving 170 markets worldwide with Fuso vehicles. Our Fuso Canter is one of the few true world trucks in operations all around the world, the ideal vehicle for the last-mile logistics. Fuso is also a leader in electrification. Today, the Fuso eCanter is already offered on 4 continents and has covered more than 3 million kilometers with customers across the globe. We are one of the most experienced producers of all-electric trucks, and we will address being a pioneer. In '22, we will launch the third generation of our battery electric world truck with a significant improvement of its profitability, and we already transformed our business model from combustion models. Most Canter models are only available with third-party ICE engines. Now let's turn to India, where we are a technology leader in the heavy-duty segment, where we successfully established our Made in India for India brand, BharatBenz. We are the first manufacturer to meet the new Indian 6 emission norms last year and grew our market share to 9.1% under severe market conditions. And we are positive that the Indian markets will continue the upswing we already saw this year and are confident in further growing our position in India and doing it in a profitable and cash-generative way, adding value to Daimler Truck overall because also in this region, we will deliver. Speaking about Daimler India commercial vehicles, it can add value beyond just serving the Indian market. We have also set up export hub, delivering parts and vehicles for all brands within the Daimler Truck networks. This leverages the full Daimler Truck potential for the best local customer fit. In particular, by serving the so-called next 30 markets, here we expect double-digit growth in the next decade. In addition, we established a low-cost, high-quality R&D and IT hub in Chennai and Bangalore. Now let's turn to China, the world's biggest truck market, in theory a source of great opportunity, but let's be honest, a market where international truck makers have struggled to find success. For Daimler, we have a strong local partnership with Foton. Profitability is not where we would like to be, but we are working hard to improve pricing and optimize our cost structure. But at Daimler Truck, every region must deliver. So what's our plan for China? What excites us going forward in China is the potential for the Mercedes-Benz brand. We are moving fast to localize the Mercedes-Benz Actros. We will be the first international truck producer to localize its top-level product, and we are confident we will have a clearly better cost position than for imported vehicles. We will be able to price competitively and to offer our customers a tremendous vehicle. We are convinced that the Chinese market is going to get more sophisticated in its demands and the share of market taken by advanced trucks is going to accelerate fast. We want to capture this with our new strategy and capture it profitably. In summary, Daimler Truck Asia is well positioned, and we are ready to take it to the next level. Profitability for Fuso in Japan is stable with a large service revenue element. Many of our important markets are expected to see tremendous growth. For example, GDP increase of 62% for Indonesia and 82% for India is predicted by 2030. And in China, our localization strategy will mark a new chapter. Additionally, we will leverage our footprint for low-cost exports and further reduce our fixed and variable costs. Asia has many opportunities. We intend to maximize the potential of our business and target regional benchmark profitability. Now let us move on to the next chapter presented by my colleague, Andreas Gorbach.

Thank you very much, Hartmut, and welcome also from my side. My name is Andreas Gorbach, Head of Truck Technology. And today, I'm here to talk about technology and even more so, its transformation. And what does technology mean for me? Technology for me is always an enabler. And if we talk about technology in a truck, what it first and foremost enables is a benefit for the customer, asset utilization, asset efficiency. Now the technologies that enable this benefit for the customer the most are 2: on the one side, the propulsion system, the power to drive; and on the other side, the operating system, the intelligence to drive. Now let's double-click on propulsion system. And the strategy as for the propulsion system is based on 3 core beliefs, on 3 convictions. The first one is about speed, the fast ramp-down of ICE, diligent but fast. The second one is about duality of technologies, battery electric and fuel cell electric. And the third one is again about speed, zero-emission speed as for the penetration into the portfolio and as for the rapid evolution of the technology itself. Let's talk about the first conviction, ICE ramp-down. Speed is the imperative. 20 years anyhow a hard fact, right? If we want to comply with the Paris deal, if we want to comply with our own ambition, 20 years is set. We are convinced that the transition will happen faster, 10 to 15 years. Why that range? Why 5 years corridor? Well, 3 reasons: First of all, very, very broad applications, very, very different use cases at our customer. Second, we still see a very heterogeneous legislative landscape. And third, the infrastructure is in its infancy and developing at different speeds around the globe. Now how to deal with that? How to manage the speed? How to manage the uncertainty? How to avoid the Clayton Christensen situation? And the answer is threefold, partnering, partnering, transitioning. Now partnering Stage 1. And you are well aware we are completely exiting our captive medium-duty technology during this decade together with Cummins. Partnering Stage 2. Also on the heavy-duty side, we are actively seeking for partners in order to share the inevitable invest into the next legislative hurdle, which is already knocking on the door, Euro 7. This is a joint challenge of the industry, and we have to solve it together, and we will solve it together. And then transitioning. Basically, as a result, this enables us to significantly reduce our spending in conventional powertrain. Already in 2025, we will spend the vast majority of our R&D spending into zero-emission technologies. Now how does the transition look like? And you see the illustrative picture here, and you could add now the uncertainty in the year 2030. Some talk about 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%. We even talk about 60% zero-emission technologies in the year 2030. The only question is what is the catalyst that makes the reaction go fast? The chemical reaction, if you will, to bring the blue line up fast and the gray line down fast. And the answer is total cost of ownership. TCO is the catalyst. In that very moment when the customer starts benefiting more from a zero-emission truck than from a diesel truck, well, there is no reason to buy the diesel truck anymore. This is the tipping point. And with the assumptions you see here, we are convinced that this starts happening in 2025 for battery electric, and it starts happening in 2027 for fuel cell electric trucks. It's the tipping point. And to win there, you need 2 things: benchmark technology as for the performance and the ability to scale fast to bring down variable cost, and we are doing both; second conviction, duality of technologies. How to propel a zero-emission truck? That's the question. And there is no debate about battery electric. There is debate about fuel cell electric. And the debates are usually around assumptions as for energy price and powertrain costs, consciously not on this slide. On this slide, we did not put the assumptions. We put the facts. And there are 3 of them. First one, these lines must cross, and it's variable cost over range -- installed cost over range. And for sure, at a low range, battery wins. Take a 40-ton 300 kW truck, I need the 300 kW fuel cell for the low range. Battery wins. Now what happens if we increase range? On the battery truck, we keep on adding battery cells, battery volume. Volume correlates with cost and volume goes to the power of 3. Now let's park the 3. Go to the fuel cell truck. We have the 300 kW installed. We increased range or we just increased the size of the tank, and the cost of the tank correlates with the surface. And that's to the power of 2. So we have to the power 3 and to the power of 2. And you understand that this, from a mathematical standpoint, means that these lines must cross. And now you can debate assumptions again and move gray and blue line up and down. And the wildest battery dream gives you 700 kilometer and the wildest fuel cell dream gives you 300 kilometer. The crucial point is for us, it doesn't matter. We have important customers to the left and to the right of the intersection. Second effect, and this is energy density over charging speed. Now isn't it impressive how the energy density has developed over the last years in a way we would have not anticipated it? And it will further develop. Yet there is limitations, right? There is limitations, for example, with the elements that are available on this planet from the periodic system. So even if we go to the extreme, we will still see a factor of 50 to 100 compared to hydrogen. And similar situation as for charging speed. Even with 2 megawatt charging on the electric side, we still have a factor of 3. So here, again, customers with high range will benefit as for payload, as for flexibility, as for charging. Third effect. Independent of trucking, independent of the mobility sector as a whole, we will see green hydrogen and green energy. Now why is that the case? Today, the countries are trading with energy, right? And we do this because the self-sufficiency of energy is not given. Some countries have too much energy. Other countries have too less energy. So we're trading with energy and today mainly with oil, coal and gas. Now we fast forward in the year 2050, and we are hopefully in a CO2-neutral society, we will still trade with energy because the self-sufficiency of the states as for green energy is also not given, sun, air, water, or at least not competitive on a global scale. Will this be electricity? Will we deal with energy in electrical form over the planet? No. We need a chemical-bond, CO2-neutral energy carrier, and hydrogen is just the best form. To sum it up, we will see customers benefiting more from battery electric. We will see customers benefiting more from fuel cell electric. Both energy carriers will be available in green and competitive price, and this is why we push both. Third conviction, speed as for zero emission. And isn't this a great starting point? The portfolio you see here. Since years, we have electric trucks in customer hands, eCanter, eCitaro, eM2, [ eJulie ], eCascadia, eActros and so on and so forth. And we keep on adding one truck after the other year by year. We even kickstarted the projects for the second half of the decade already, but still, this is not enough for us. And to put a little bit more color on it, let's have a look at this clip. [Presentation]

Now as you can see, it is not just about speed as for the penetration into the portfolio. It is also about technology evolution. What we are launching the next years is already benchmark as for the characteristics in range, in efficiency, in variable costs and in charging. But we are already working on pushing this to the next level, and we're talking about 60% more range. We talk about 25% improvement in efficiency, 40% reduced variable cost and up to 2 megawatt charging. Now the question here is what are the ingredients that we need to do this? What are the accelerators behind that story? And 3 of them are really important. It's people, it's technology and infrastructure. On the people side, we have well understood that we need to ramp up competencies and capabilities and capacities as for e-propulsion. Catalog engineering is not enough here. We need to understand, we need to specify, we need to engineer the key electric components on our own. People. Technology. We have well understood that just upscaling [ pass car ] technologies is not sufficient. We need truck dedication. We need truck genes. And I'm super happy to announce a partnership here as for the battery cell with CATL, and I'll talk about it in a minute. Technology. Infrastructure. We have well understood that just offering a truck in the future will not be sufficient, and this is why we are partnering as for the infrastructure as well. And I'm super excited here to announce a couple of partnerships here in a minute as well. And then certainly, the truck. And we are already working on the next-gen e-truck as well, and this truck will certainly be able to incorporate all the new benchmark technologies. It will certainly be able to cope with the next level of infrastructure, and it will bring its own next-level genes as for powertrain integration and aerodynamics. Now let's have a look at what we are doing with CATL. Well, first step, and this is the baseline, we secure supply with the technology to resell. [ The sites ] cost focus very much on durability and fast-charging ability. This is the baseline for the truck genes. Even beyond this, we are already jointly exploring opportunities to localize production in North America and in Europe, lower logistic costs, lower CO2 footprint, higher local content. And I'm super happy now that we have a statement today from Robin Zeng, CEO of CATL.

Dimer Truck AG has built an outstanding reputation for its high-quality vehicles and reliable service, which have been well recognized in the whole commercial vehicle industry. We're very happy to strengthen the existing partnership based on our shared vision in e-mobility. With CATL's innovative technology in EV batteries and Daimler Trucks' strong expertise in the heavy truck industry, we work jointly on the development and the design of advanced battery cells and packs for truck-specific applications. We believe the partnership will enable Daimler Truck AG to further enhance its market position on the e-mobility stage and lead the way to the realization of carbon neutrality.

Now what are we doing on the infrastructure side? On the infrastructure side, we partner with Power Electronics in North America, Siemens and Engie in Europe. Jointly, we'll develop chargers such that we not only can sell the customer a truck but also part of the ecosystem, including the charging intelligence and including installation support. We start with 350 kW. We are already working on the dimension of mega chargers at the same time. And now we are shifting from battery electric to fuel cell electric. And let's do this with a short film. [Presentation]

Now as you can see also on the hydrogen side, on the fuel cell electric side, we have extremely high ambitions, 1,200 kilometer range, 24 tons payload, only 15 minutes charging and maybe more important, nothing less than 90% reduction of variable cost. And again, the question, what are the ingredients here? What are the accelerators behind this story? And the answer is the same. It's people. It's technology. It's infrastructure. And people and technology are self-centric here. And I could talk an hour about it, very emotional, as I had just the privilege to set up and lead this company. And I can tell you the technology road map, the cost road map is super convincing. 25 years experience in fuel cell now 100% dedicated for trucking in a joint venture with Volvo; self-centric, people, technology. On the infrastructure side, we partner with Linde for the right technology for liquid refiling. We partner in a consortium with many partners to jointly push the infrastructure and standards. And that's new and I'm happy to announce this today as well: we partner with Shell, in a partnership where we showcase how we jointly remove the chicken and egg problem. So what are we doing with Shell? A concrete route, 1,200 kilometers, Rotterdam, Hamburg, Cologne, Shell providing the stations, us providing the trucks, ready in 2025. Already, we are thinking beyond 2025. We are thinking 2030. We are thinking 150 stations and 5,000 trucks, and we opened this partnership for everybody else. Let's hear what Ben Van Beurden has to say, CEO of Shell.

In February, Shell set out its strategy, Powering Progress, to accelerate the transition of our business to net zero emissions. To get there, we will work with customers and companies across sectors and industries, and sectors such as heavy-duty trucking remain one of the highest to decarbonize. But with hydrogen, there is hope. And I'm delighted that Shell and Daimler Trucks have committed to a substantial rollout of hydrogen trucks and infrastructure across Europe. This is a partnership of 2 industry titans. It builds on the work Shell already doing to develop hydrogen both as a fuel for transport and industry. Hydrogen, along with electrification, can help to decarbonize the economy and advance Europe's own goal to be carbon-neutral by 2050, but this requires projects and policies and partnerships. And today's announcement is another big step in that direction.

Now let's talk about the second key technology, the operating system. What are we doing here? Step-by-step, we move the electronic architecture of the truck into a software-driven, into a software-defined architecture. What does that mean? It means we reduce the amount of computing units in a truck, less computing units but more powerful computing units, thereby delinking hardware and software cycles and thereby pulling in the relevant software know-how that we need. What's the benefit for the customer? Well, certainly, more uptime. Less workshop visits as we flash over-the-air and more efficient workshop visits as the workshop is already knowing that the customer is coming and what to do. Certainly also, in addition, more tailored digital services and, maybe the most important thing, it enables the seamless integration of the asset called truck into its ERP system. What's in for us? Certainly, additional revenue streams and customer loyalty, certainly more speed as we decouple hard and software and then the big data thing. And why is this so important? We today already understand very well what the customer is doing with the truck. With all the data that we get here, we understand even better, in every second the customer uses the truck, what is he doing and how can we further improve the product to the benefit of the customer. Already in 2023, we launched the first evolution here. From the beginning, 100% connected, 100% ready for over-the-air, ready for the next generation of HMI, ready for the next generation of safety systems, ready for the next generation of predictive intelligence, ready for the next generation of electric and fuel cell electric trucks. And maybe this is the most exciting thing, also ready for autonomous driving. And this topic is so important that I give it back to Martin.

Thank you, Andreas. The operating system Andreas Gorbach just talked about serves as a basis for our next-generation trucks and is a key enabler of our autonomous technology. Autonomous is one of the holy grails out there. And to win in autonomous, we are following a dual-track strategy. We are focusing on developing a redundant chassis, the hardware basis for any autonomous driverless driving. Here, we are working together with Waymo as a key strategic partner. Secondly, we are developing our own virtual driver, the software package for hub-to-hub operations on North American highways, together with Torc, pioneer in the heavy-duty autonomous industry, independent subsidiary of Daimler Trucks, we had invested in already 2 years ago. Our dual-track strategy will not only accelerate the deployment of autonomous technology but also provide our customers with a choice as to what solution best fits their business. We are convinced that with this dual-track strategic approach, we will win the revolution in transportation. Now let's take a look together to understand our dual-track strategy with our partners more in detail and also hear from the CEOs of our partners, Tekedra Mawakana from Waymo, and Michael Fleming from Torc. [Presentation]

So now it is time to sum up this event and bring proceedings to a close before we turn to the Q&A. And this slide reiterates the message that we communicated at the beginning today, our mission as an independent company. Our mission is clear and based on 2 guiding principles. First, we are absolutely committed to resetting profitability. We have to deliver on this as a public company. I am laser-focused on it personally, as is Jochen, as is the whole management team. And how will we do that? It is start, first and foremost, with fixing Europe. Europe is our biggest challenge. And as you've heard from Karin Rådström today, we are accelerating our efforts to turn Europe around and restore margins to the level that we know we are capable of and that do justice to our technology and our brand. Beyond Europe, we will also be highly focused. We will target the profit benchmark in each region. There's work to do in a number of areas, but this is no excuse commitment. Every region must deliver. We will also grow our profitability and our relationship with customers with a big emphasis on services. We already have a strong service portfolio, but those recurrent revenues will be an increasingly important profit driver for us going forward. And this needs to all come together to deliver strong shareholder returns with a management philosophy that makes sure we deliver value and strong dividends for our owners. In addition to the intense focus on resetting profitability, we are also committed to leading the way to zero emissions. This is our responsibility as a company and as the industry leader. As Andreas Gorbach just described and detailed, we are going to refocus our R&D activities on zero-emission technology. The majority of our R&D spending will be focused to zero-emission trucks by 2025. Related to this, we are going to sundown our ICE activities with partnering strategies. We've done that already in medium-duty engines with Cummins, and we are working on more solutions that will allow us to manage our exit from legacy activities. And as we move fast to deliver best-in-class zero-emission trucks, we will follow a dual-track BEV and fuel strategy because we are convinced our customers will need both technologies. And we will make sure that we are highly cost competitive, thanks to ambitious targets and by leveraging our scale and our partnerships. Finally, we will kickstart the infrastructure in both charging and hydrogen, as we have highlighted today. So that's it. That's our mission. We are pursuing profit and technology leadership. We will be tireless in our efforts to deliver on these promises. We are excited about becoming an independent company, excited to be listing later this year and excited to welcome investors and analysts on this journey. In fact, I'm personally looking forward to meeting many of you in the months and years ahead. Thank you for joining us today. And now let's turn to the Q&A, where I'm sure you will have some great questions for the team.

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, also from my side. I'm Steffen Hoffmann, heading Investor Relations. And I'm very happy to have the Daimler Truck management team here on stage for today's Q&A session. There was a lot of interesting and valuable content today. You will be able to deep dive into all single aspects of the presentations. They will be made available after the event in the Investor Relations section on daimler.com. Now in our Q&A session, you will have the chance to raise questions concerning the topics we just presented. Please focus on those fields. Before we start, a few practical points. First, in case you want to ask a question to our management team, you will have to dial in individually by telephone and register. The dial-in numbers have been shared within our final invite that we sent out on Monday last week. [Operator Instructions] Last but not least, please be aware to mute the livestream while raising your question and listening to the regarding answers. Now before we start, the operator will explain the procedure for dialing in.

[Operator Instructions]

Thanks for the explanation. I see already lots of callers have queued up for the Q&A, and we do start with Horst Schneider from Bank of America.

It's Horst Schneider from Bank of America. I have got 2, please. The first one is a little bit more short term-related. I understand you talked today mainly about the midterm perspective, which is, of course, very important. Nevertheless, of course, you understand we have got also a little bit more short-term focus. I would not say only short-term focus but a little bit as well. So as we know, you guide for the 6% to 7% adjusted EBIT margin for 2021. Can you maybe explain again why you are not more optimistic? What keeps you away from getting more bullish? Or how [indiscernible] this guidance is, finally? And also related to the short-term picture, I remember to the 2019 CMD where you guided for the more than 7% adjusted EBIT margin in 2022. And yes, referring to your weather guidance, I think, and looking at your order book, I think it looks as sunny as into the half for next year. So I just want to understand how quickly you can achieve these midterm margins. Can that achieve -- may be achieved already in 2022? A more medium-term question, related the U.S. truck business, where I like basically your vocational strategy. But on the other hand, of course, we need to take into account that also competition is heating up because one of your competitors here, especially Navistar, is getting much stronger by the takeover of TRATON. And they will have a better product, the lower TCO as well. And that -- with that, of course, the risk that you lose market share. And with that also, you lose profitability. So yes, how can you prevent that? That -- maybe not in the end -- maybe better European profitability is compensated by a weaker U.S. profitability.

First one for Jochen, second one for John afterwards.

Okay. Horst, thanks for your question regarding the guidance. So first of all, it's great to see the demand for our products, especially in the most important markets in Europe. And NAFTA is strong in absolute terms but also in relative terms. So we're very pleased what we see in the order intake and the market share at the beginning of the year. However, as you all know, we are in a very cyclical business, and we see that also short term. And what we see at the moment is really a stretch on the semiconductor side. We see a significant impact on Q2, and it's not clear. And still, it's very volatile. What does it mean from a full year perspective? That's the reason why we stick with our guidance at the moment. There is clear demand beyond that. If the supply chain is able to fulfill this demand, there's upside potential. But for now, we stick with our guidance and, as we also said as part of the Q1, at the upper end of this guidance. Second question regarding midterm, Horst, as you know, we don't guide the next year right now. But I could say we see also good demand in the year to come, and we feel very confident to achieve at least what we promised in 2019.

And John, we would go over to you.

Yes. Thank you, Steffen. Yes, Horst, so for sure, we're not here to talk about our competitors. I respect them deeply, but we are in a really strong position right now. We're not playing defense. We're on the offense. We're not going to just stand pat. As we heard earlier in the presentation, we're all about increasing to drive even harder, to become more profitable, to even get more share. And again, it's all about profit for us. So will there be some pressure on us? Undoubtedly, but we have great products. We have amazing relationships with customers. We have a dealer network that's second to none. So I really like the position that we're in, to be chased rather than being the chaser.

Thanks a lot, John. And the next one in the queue is José Asumendi from JPMorgan.

José, JPMorgan. A couple of questions, please. Karin, please could you talk a little bit about the opportunity to improve financial services in Europe and reduce the fixed cost base? Especially in the light of your extensive career as probably one of the most profitable truck makers in Europe. When you land at Daimler, what was -- specifically for you, what surprised you the most in terms of that fixed cost base, the vertical integration and also the levers to improve the service share?

So Karin, the first one was on the importance of service in Europe and then kind of what surprised you most.

Yes. Well, thank you for the question. I think what I see is that we have a huge potential with services. I think historically, Daimler or especially Mercedes-Benz trucks has been maybe a little bit more transaction-focused, so more really focused on the selling of the vehicles. But that has started to change, and we will continue to drive the focus more on the service business. And I mean, there's a lot of things we can do. Obviously, one important one is the kind of questions that I'm asking. So I'm very diligently following up our KPIs on service. And when we start digging into our service KPIs, we see that there is potential, more or less, in all markets. And we also see that we have a big variance in markets on how we perform on service. So what we've started doing is taking learnings between the markets to see how we can carry over good practices. We also see that we have a relatively low penetration on the traditional services, repair and maintenance. So we're doing a lot of initiatives related to that. And I think also, the work that we're doing related to retail in Europe, where, first of all, we're splitting from the car side, where, until today, we still have a lot of locations where we mix cars and trucks, which is generally not optimal because they need to be kind of in different places. The car dealership should be maybe in the center of the city, and the truck workshop should be close to the highway. So a lot of work going on to improve that. And we're also investing in retail, as I mentioned before, both on our own and together with partners. About what surprised me? It's a good question. I think I knew what I was getting into, so not so many surprises. But maybe a positive surprise is that I feel very welcomed. And I know it's not so common for Daimler to take in outsiders. But I feel from day 1, I've been very welcomed by the truck Board and also by my own management team. And that there is a big interest and a surge to understand my experiences and how I look at the challenges that we're facing. So that's a positive one.

Thank you, Karin. And we would continue with Arndt Ellinghorst from Bernstein.

Two questions, please. The first one, on delivering value to shareholders. Can you talk a little bit about how you think about excess liquidity, how you think about the dividend policy? I'm sure you're aware that other industrial goods companies have a fairly flexible dividend policy to reflect the nature of the business. Some pay special dividends. But do you think about something similar? Or will you stick to the more conventional payout ratios that you're used to from the Daimler world? And second one is on management incentivization. I'm sure you understand that, that's a very important topic for investors. You've been around for a long time running Daimler. We've discussed these fundamental issues for a long time. We discussed them again today. Can you share a couple of ideas how you will make sure that the management team is truly accountable?

Arndt, thank you for your question. Very good questions. First of all, dividend policy, it's -- I would say it's too early to talk about the dividend. But we will have -- we have a clear -- we will have a clear policy. We are focused on high net income. We are focused on a good cash conversion rate, what we had since years. So there will be the liquidity, and we are determined to create value for our shareholders. That in a volatile business, you have to adjust to the market is clear. So we'll find a very good way to have the shareholders participate in our value creation. For me, fundamental is that management has a stake in the company, and nothing is better to let the people focus on the share price, let -- that they have a lot of shares. So I like the share program at the moment, and Daimler will certainly take it over, make it available or make everyone participate in such a program. I love the idea that senior management have to hold a certain amount of stocks. So we are really long time vested in the company and benefit and suffer if our -- in the same way our shareholders do. And I can guarantee you, we will benefit as our shareholders benefit from that investment in Daimler Trucks.

Thank you very much, Martin and Arndt. And the next one in the queue is Nicolai Kempf from Deutsche Bank.

Yes. Nicolai Kempf from Deutsche Bank. My first question will be for Ms. Rådström. And I believe you analyzed that eActros can some parts be described as overengineered. So how do you make sure that the electric truck will not be overengineered, especially, keep in mind, that the same competitor from California likes to brag of its range? And the second question, how flexible is your platform? And can you build electric, fuel cell and diesel trucks on the same platform?

Karin, I suggest you take the first one. And then I suggest that Andreas takes the second one on the e-truck.

Yes. Thanks for the question. Well, I think I mentioned it earlier in my speech a little bit. The work that we've done with the eActros is a little bit different approach than what we've had in the earlier generations. So we really had it out testing it early together with customers, I think 4 different markets, around 20 different customers. And we really used that insight to make sure that we are actually developing a truck which is not overengineered but which is exactly what our customers are asking for. And I feel confident that we will bring a really, really good truck to the market that will be just rightly engineered.

Yes. And as for the flexibility versus commonality, I'm very optimistic, especially with the new setup, that we will find the right balance of engineering key technologies centrally for all our brands and regions and, at the same time, have the right customer differentiation with the regional brands. So all the key technologies we're going to engineer fit in the trucks of all regions. And at the same time, we translate what the customer needs regionally, which might differ into the truck differentiation at the same time.

Thank you very much, Karin and Andreas. The next one in the queue is Philippe Houchois from Jefferies.

Yes. I thought it was very interesting but also very punchy. And I have a couple of questions. One is the pace of transition to zero-emission vehicle. In corporate, thinking seems to be accelerating in trucks in the same pace as cars. So my question is, going forward, when you think about allocation of capital towards ICE developments versus pulling capital away, how does that conflict with still ongoing regulation pressure, including discussion around Euro VII? So I'm just -- what I'm trying to understand is what -- if the industry led by actors like you accelerate transition to zero emission, what is the possibility of pushing back on some of the additional costs that will be coming to your P&Ls as we fade out the ICE technology? And I'm also trying to understand how much of that opportunity maybe drives your reduction in CapEx and fixed cost that you're talking about in your targets. The second question is, I appreciate very much the divisional disclosure that you're going to give us. And you were very honest about the failures of the past, and I appreciate that as well. So it's obviously a very strong ambition to succeed, and the body language on the stage shows that. So you're going to succeed everywhere, and that's the plan. What if you don't? Are you going to be in a situation where, "We didn't quite get the margin we want, so we'll keep the business anyway because we justify it's a scale." Or are you ready to actually make more difficult decisions regarding the portfolio to make sure that the financial performance lives up to your market position and your brand?

Thank you, Philippe. So I suggest, Martin, you take both questions.

Yes. Yes, Philippe, first of all, the transition from ICE to zero emission will be at the end accretion of 3 factors: Our offering, and that will be great and comprehensive. Secondly, about the infrastructure, and that is when you talk more than 10,000 trucks on the road, a -- pretty difficult and will take its time. So that might limit fast trend up. And the third one is TCO, and that depends on how the prices for energy develop over time and what we base our toll system in Europe on -- whether on CO2 or NOx. We can see various scenarios. We will be prepared for every scenario, even a much faster ramp-up than shown here. But on the other side, if it goes slower because of infrastructural delays, no problem for us as well. Euro VII, indeed, is a pain. There are some changes which will help the environment and where we can comply and which is possible and doable to do. And there are other issues in which we, and not we as Daimler, we as an industry, are intense discussion with politicians as well in Berlin, as in Brussels, as in Washington, D.C. to figure out a way where it makes a senseful transition. Because when we see you have 60% of the trucks converting over to zero emission, why to regulate the remaining diesel even further and, therefore, potentially even have a bigger pull-forward impact? Pretty difficult question these days. One reaction of ours was clear. On those engines where we have small scale, like on the medium-duty side, we teamed up with Cummins of a far much broader base and larger base so we can scale our investments. And I could see a similar thing on heavy-duty. Here, potentially, we offer our services to other manufacturers because we have a huge scale on the heavy-duty platform. But we have to see in the next years. It will be an interesting question. The second question that is divisional disclosures and what is -- if we don't succeed. First of all, we have very comprehensive plans. We analyze the situation. We know our weaknesses, and we shared some of you -- with you today, and we work diligently with it. And there is between -- we keep it as today, which we don't because otherwise, we wouldn't change the results, to complete closure. There is a full host of possibilities we have, and we won't be shy because failure is not an option. We want to raise our profitability. And we have to raise our profitability for you, the shareholders, as well as for our capability to have all the investments necessary for our core products where we make the money. And therefore, I'm very confident that we find the right answers. And with our transparency that we offer -- we are going to offer to you, we will be very accountable for what we are doing. And I'm sure this question might be asked more specifically at a date in the future, and we'll get a more specific answer then.

Thank you very much, Martin. And the next one in our queue is Kai Mueller from Barclays.

The first one is really when we look at the cycle and you have your targets for 2025, is it fair to assume that the current environment we are in right now would be one of those sunny days environments, the year of 2021? And if so, can you give us also a little bit of a sense on how you would look at North America versus Europe in the different scenarios? Is it fair to say that North America will always stand out compared to Europe and Asia? Or is there a pathway to get them aligned? And then the second question I had is really around the technology side again. When we look at the powertrain spending, I understand now medium-duty, you are pushing to Cummins. For heavy-duty, you talk about cooperation. Is it fair to say that you can then do that transition to BEV and fuel cell technology whilst keeping the current R&D spending similar and just reallocating it to the new technologies? Or should we expect some rising R&D in the medium term in order to overcome those challenges?

First one, Jochen, you would take on the weather charge. And then the second one is probably between Andreas and Jochen, so probably Andreas starts, and Jochen might fill in.

Okay. Thanks for the question. Regarding where we are in the cycle, as I said before, when we talked about the guidance, the demand this year is strong, I would say more on the sunny side. However, and I want to repeat what I said before, we have a lot of uncertainty at the moment regarding the availability of chips or semiconductors. So overall, from today's perspective, we would call it more the fair weather scenario for 2021 than really the strong sunny one. To your question regarding North America and Europe, first of all, North America, we are already strong. I think John showed a lot of good examples why we are there and also showed that with our tailor-made vocational truck, we have even the potential to get stronger going forward. But if I look -- and it's fair to say for the -- in the longer history of Europe, you also might remember that Europe was even stronger in the years between 2005 and 2008. So the potential from the market is the same. So there is no reason why Europe should be not as strong as North America. That's what we are working on. That's our plan. And as Martin said, there are very concrete measures ahead, which bring us on a similar level than we see in Europe -- in North America today.

Yes. Kai, I think you -- to the point, right, I mean, this is certainly a huge challenge, what you described, for us and for the overall industry. And really, the most important thing is focus on partnering, focus on heavy-duty in this example, partnering on medium-duty. We're partnering on the battery side and fuel cell side as well. So these are the key ingredients focused on partnering. What I'd like to add is that people tend to underestimate the advantage also that we have with conventional powertrain and e-mobility in one organization because the competencies that you need to successfully integrate the powertrain into a truck, they do not differ too much. So there's always, in the combination of zero emission and conventional powertrain, especially on the R&D side, also optimism from my end that we will see synergies there from the competence standpoint. Jochen, I don't know whether you want to add something to this?

Well, maybe just a short in addition. If you look on the R&D, as a starting point, 2019, also keep in mind that we had a lot of major projects in 2019. We talked about China briefly today. We talked about the vocational truck in the U.S. We talked about renewable in Brazil. So there are a lot of big projects included in 2019. So they will go away because they're finally done now. So that helps to lower the overall R&D. And the second one, I also mentioned that in my speech is the so-called active portfolio approach, where we really think about where are the biggest profit pools of the future. And we will spend our money where we believe we get the best return going forward.

Thank you, Jochen and Andreas. We continue with George Galliers from Goldman Sachs.

I know you didn't give the split between fuel cell and battery electric vehicle. But I was wondering if it would be possible to give us some idea of how you see the 2 different markets shaping up and whether you expect significant regional differences. And the reason I ask is, obviously, you've talked about the desire to reduce complexity and take cost out of the business through that. So with that in mind, I just wonder, the pursuit of 2 different powertrain technologies, is the size of the fuel cell market large enough to warrant the investments that you plan to make there?

George, I might start with this, and then I hand over to Andreas because this is one of the key questions for the future of trucking. I see -- when you look on a macro perspective, I think the short-term way from now to 2025 will be definitely electric. Why? Because it's only a few trucks. And for a few trucks, electric infrastructure is fairly easy. Between 2025 and 2035, the next 10-year period, then we ramp up massively. And we is not Daimler, we is the entire industry. The strain on the infrastructure, always understanding that parallel the passenger car world is ramping up as well, the strain on the infrastructure, especially on the electric grid, will be so enormous that in my opinion, there is no way that we can do it with just one energy source. We need 2. And then beyond 2035, it depends where do we get our renewable energy in the world. If we have to store the energy over time, meaning producing it today and using it tomorrow, over distant, meaning producing it in a hot country with endless sunshine and using it in a gray, foggy, windless Northern Europe, and if you have to then transport that energy, the only way to transport it will be H2. And once you have energy in H2, the easiest way to get it out in a fuel cell. With all that, that is, I would say, only electric until 2025, other than a couple of test trucks on fuel cells, between '25 and '35, 50-50 between the 2. And after that, the decision is how will the clean energy of the future economy will be -- will work. On the cost side, Andreas, potentially, over to you, and the synergies between the 2 or whether it's stupid to have 2 completely different technologies in an engineering department.

Yes. The scale question is extra relevant, yes. I mean, what we see during this decade in cellcentric is around a 10 gigawatt per year scale. And this is possible as we partner with Volvo and as we have Rolls-Royce Power System also as an important customer. This is about the scale it takes to bring down the cost level to the sufficient level that also enables the TCO breakeven during this decade. This is one of the reasons why we partner here, besides sharing the invest. On the infrastructure side, I'm also very optimistic like you are, Martin. As I said earlier, it is anyhow inevitable to decarbonize all the other industry sectors. So in a CO2-neutral society, we're anyhow going to see competitive green hydrogen independent of the trucking industry. And I would turn it around. Imagine this comes true, and you have not invested in a fuel cell truck. And then the competition shows up with a fuel cell truck, which gives more benefit to the customer. So I see the risk of the double invest lower than the risk not to invest.

Thank you, Martin. Thank you, Andreas. Thanks, George. And we continue with Patrick Hummel from UBS.

Hummel, Patrick here from UBS, also 2 questions from my side. Actually, 2 follow-ups, one on the R&D. When you gave the R&D and CapEx outlook, I was wondering how you account for the activities that you have in partnerships or joint ventures in there? I guess that is where a lot of investment is required. These joint ventures won't be self-funding because they're early stage such as the fuel cell joint venture. And it wasn't quite clear to me to which extent you have to put your own money into the partnership with CATL. So if you can just give us a feel how much of an investment will be required in the next few years in these partnerships, in these JVs that might not be included in that CapEx and R&D guidance that you gave? And my second question is a follow-up on the incentives. You said every region, every division has to deliver. If you're incentivized with stock, it's relatively easy to sail with the fantastic performance of the North American business, which is a profit driver, number one. But how will you bring this element into the compensation of the regional units? And also, when it comes to the determination of the variable compensation, how does that environment play into this? Who determines whether a performance was achieved in a stormy weather condition or a fair weather condition? If you can just give a bit more color how that variable compensation scheme is going to work, please?

Okay. I'll start with the first one regarding R&D. So first of all, it's an all-in number. So whatever we need in the joint ventures we have today is included in these numbers. So there is not a day off. It's really all in, number one. Number two, well, we do not disclose obviously the capital injections we plan for each and every joint venture. It depends on how fast we can grow that, but be assured that it's in our plan for 2025. It might be known today that we have additional joint ventures going forward. That might change that, but it also means we step into new business areas then going forward. What we know today, what we see today, it's baked into the plan for 2025.

And when it comes to the incentive, I would say mutual incentivization is always difficult because it's not just difficult to determine what type of weather situation it's in, it's at the end to determine who was responsible for that. First of all, we here, as a Board, have a common responsibility. Every region has to deliver. Does not mean John has to deliver and, if not, bad luck, we are still 7 great guys. And I use -- John, I used you deliberately, it was just as an example. We are all responsible for that. We have to stand in for each other. And that is not just the guys like Andreas or Jochen or myself who are responsible for all the region. We have Steffen Unger with financial services who supports all. But it's, again, John working together with Karin to make a transfer of best knowledge, Karin working together with John supplying technology potentially, which is already used in Europe and then introduced to North America. So there are so many interdependencies between each region. I would say that the Board at least has to -- only can be incentivized of the entire company. Local management, if we have local targets like a fixed cost reduction program in Europe, like get the vocational truck out of the door in high quality and high customer satisfaction in North America or have the electrification of Japan going forward at a record pace, that you have a such kind of local task, special local incentive, I could see that. And we will be very creative on that and motivate our people. It's -- the importance is that you motivate your people and give the results that the shareholder needs at the end of the day.

Thank you very much. And the next one in the queue is Stephen Reitman from Societe Generale.

Yes. Stephen Reitman, Societe Generale, London. An observation and a question. First of all, I'd like to congratulate you. I think -- I don't think I've ever heard this degree of honesty on presentations about the performance of the European operations. And I'm not sure whether the contents of the poll you gave about the -- whether the positioning of Mercedes would have been -- this has never been talked about before by management. So that's a very good thing. My question is about electrification and for all the arguments that have been in the past about keeping Daimler, as an entire group, has been elements of scale. So my question is, you see with the separation, you talk about you will bring your scale to bear in electrification. But would there be benefits of having even greater scale if the combined purchasing are now going to be with cars and trucks together? Are the truck batteries so fundamentally different from those used in the passenger cars and vans? And do you see potentially maybe the joint purchasing still some JV with Mercedes cars and vans in the future for securing sales?

Thank you. Andreas, would you take over?

Yes. Very good question, Stephen. And obviously, what we do see, as for the early adopters at the moment, is usually upscaling pass car technology as for the availability of it. However, and as said earlier, if you look into the next 5 to 10 years, the truck dedication of the technology is really crucial. And then we start really differentiating from pass car technology. It's similar to a combustion engine, right? It's both a diesel engine, but you don't find too many synergies between a pass car diesel and a truck diesel engine. We need different optimization criteria. For us, reliability, durability, fast-charging ability are way more important than other characteristics. And this indeed leads to a different cell chemistry. So moving forward, for us, it's rather crucial to partner with other truck players than it is to partner with pass car players. The same holds then true on the purchasing side.

Thank you, Andreas. And we have time for one more set of questions. So I'd like to ask Tom Narayan from RBC.

Yes. Tom Narayan, RBC. Karin, I understand the challenge you have for you is quite daunting, and you're coming from one of the best truck makers in Europe. Curious what return on sales level you would consider in Europe as benchmark. Maybe you can distinguish between sunny and rainy scenarios. And then Martin, would you be open to opening up the fuel cell joint venture to other truck makers? The investment you guys have before you is significant. There are suppliers out there also making fuel cell stacks and presumably with the advantage that they can sell those fuel cells to anybody. Just wondering if you could open them up perhaps to a competitor that Karin used to work at.

Yes. I can start. Well, I think it was mentioned in one of the earlier questions, I think, for sure, that double-digit margins are possible in Europe. And of course, that's not where we are today though with the programs we're running right now both on the top line and related to cost, I think we will start moving in that direction. But then, of course, this customer satisfaction level that we had and that I also showed earlier on in my presentation, that's not something you turn around in 6 months because it takes time to rebuild a strong trust and a strong relation with all of our customers. So I think, for sure, we go for double-digit margins on a medium-term outlook.

And then for the fuel cell question, let me say, first of all, if you have too many cooks in the kitchen, it takes longer to get the dinner ready than if you have really focused and expert cooks in the kitchen. At the moment, Volvo and us are 2 great cooks working together, and it's going really amazingly well. We have, though, a third partner, not as an equity partner, but as a partner who will take sizable chunks of our fuel cell and helps us to reach the necessary scale position, which is Rolls-Royce Power System. And I won't exclude that once this fuel cell is up and running and can be touched and felt and built into vehicles, that we are open for other manufacturers that we deliver them fuel cell. And ultimately, we can think of even selling some stakes in it. But this is -- I would say, this is long-term and speculations here. Therefore, let's summarize like, we are open for -- to sell these fuel cells to others once Daimler and Volvo have their full supply covered. And I would say we have high plans. And so at the moment, no need for another partner.

Thank you very much. So ladies and gentlemen, thank you for virtually being with us today, and thank you for your questions. We hope you enjoyed the Daimler Truck Strategy Day. Also, a big thank you to the Daimler Truck management team for their presentations and for answering all of these questions. Now Investor Relations remains at your disposal to answer any further questions you might have. We look forward to talking to you soon. Martin, do you want to have some final remarks?

Yes. I would. A big thank you from my side to the Daimler Truck management team for being with us today. Thank you for everyone here helping us prepare this exciting event. For my team and myself, I can say it very clearly, we are very excited about what lies ahead of Daimler Truck. And we are looking forward to shape this journey as a management team as we are fully dedicated to the strategy we showed you today. More detailed information will be provided in the course of the next months and at our Capital Market Day in Q4. Looking forward to seeing you again soon. Take care, and bye-bye.