Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. This is Christian Herrmann speaking. On behalf of Daimler Truck, I'd like to welcome you on both telephone and the internet to our Q1 Results Global Conference call. We have already released our results and our outlook yesterday evening, so we are going to show details and share further information with you in this call. We are very happy to have with us today Eva Scherer, our CFO. Eva will begin with an introduction directly followed by a Q&A session. The respective presentation can be found on the Daimler Truck IR website. On our request, this conference will be recorded. The replay of the conference call will also be available as an on-demand audio webcast in the investor relations section of the Daimler Truck website.
I would like to remind you that this telephone conference is governed by the safe harbor wording you will find in our published results documents. Please note, our presentation contains forward-looking statements that reflect management's current views with respect to future events. Such statements are subject to many risks and uncertainties. If the assumptions underlying any of these statements prove incorrect, then actual results may be materially different from those expressed or implied by such statements. Forward-looking statements speak only to the date on which they are made. With this, I would like to hand over to you, Eva.
Thank you, Christian, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our results call for the first quarter in 2025. Overall, our first quarter results came in strong, especially considering the growing macroeconomic uncertainties. In our industrial business, we generated revenues of EUR 11.6 billion on the back of 99,800 units sold. Adjusted group EBIT totaled EUR 1.2 billion. Adjusted return on sales for the industrial business amounted to 9.6%, resulting in earnings per share of $0.99. Free cash flow in the industrial business came in at EUR 33 million, bringing our net industrial liquidity to EUR 7.9 billion at the end of the quarter. These results reflect our improved resilience on group level and underscore the commitment and performance of our global team. With market uncertainties continuing, we remain extremely focused on our optimization measures to structurally improve our business, reduce volatility, and improve cash generation and return on capital.
We are making good progress on several of our long-term key value drivers. We have increased our resilience and reduced the dependency on the on-highway market in North America with our vocational strategy. At the same time, the investments in our long-term customer relationships are paying off. We are continuing our cost and capital allocation discipline, focusing on the most attractive market segments. I want to extend a sincere thank you to everyone across the organization who made this possible. To bring us to the next level of performance, we have proactively implemented key measures in the first quarter of 2025. One initial measure was to reorganize the Mercedes-Benz Trucks segment and to merge our businesses in India and China into the Mercedes-Benz Trucks business, effective January 1. Regarding India, this means that the BharatBenz business is being integrated into the Mercedes-Benz Trucks segment.
Regarding China, we are assessing the future setup of our joint venture together with our partner, and China is now part of the Mercedes-Benz truck segment. Why are we pursuing this change in segmentation? It improves parts and components commonality across product platforms. It leverages a global production and development network. It enhances the utilization of our global talent pool, and it boosts BharatBenz truck exports to global markets. On the customer and product side, we can also report some good news in the first quarter. In January, Amazon placed its largest ever order for electric trucks, 202 Mercedes-Benz eActros 600 vehicles, marking the biggest electric truck contract in our company's history. In March, we announced our Truck Charge initiative to establish Europe's largest semi-public charging network for electric trucks, aiming to deploy over 3,000 fast charging points by 2030 to accelerate the transition to zero-emission transportation.
We successfully tested our next generation Gen H2 fuel cell truck in the Swiss Alps, proving its power, reliability, and zero-emission performance under extreme conditions. Daimler Truck has delivered the latest version of its autonomous-ready Freightliner Cascadia platform to Torque Robotics, marking a major milestone towards commercial development. Testing now includes a high-volume freight corridor between Laredo and Dallas. In addition to these exciting product developments, we will also continue our efforts to drive improvements on the cost side with our Cost Down Europe program. We announced last week that we have reached an agreement with the General Works Council, which now needs to be approved by the respective bodies. We have achieved a result which will make Mercedes-Benz Trucks significantly more competitive and which enables us to reduce our cost base in Europe by more than EUR 1 billion by latest 2030.
The agreement includes the commitment to optimize all relevant personnel and organization-related cost levers of our European truck business, including factor cost, personnel flexibility, employee profit sharing, production footprint, as well as the streamlining of all our indirect functions. One clear focus of our Cost Down Europe program is the reduction of factor cost across all functions and locations in Germany, with the one aim: bringing our Germany-based organization to a competitive cost level. To do so, we are implementing different measures. For example, salary increases from collective bargaining agreements will be partly compensated by a reduction of other salary elements. In addition, two paid vacation days will be canceled per year. To increase our resilience and to manage volatilities in demand quicker and more cost-efficiently, in all German locations, we will increase the maximum quota for temporary workers to 18%.
At the same time, we will increase the possible duration of temporary employment to five years in all locations. Whereas today the profit sharing of our employees in Germany is mainly based on the overall global performance of Daimler Truck, we will transform this into a clearly performance-based model, linking the payout to the Mercedes-Benz Trucks Europe performance and our long-term profitability targets. At current performance levels of Mercedes-Benz Trucks, the new profit sharing model will lead to significantly lower payouts than today, and employees will benefit once profitability targets are reached. The restructuring of our, as of today, very Germany-focused production network will play a major role in bringing down our yearly operating costs and increasing our resilience. We will review and redefine the scope of components that we target to produce in-house in our German production locations.
We will pursue the outsourcing of non-core business scope following a structured make-or-buy process. We will relocate parts of today's production volume to alternative production locations outside of Germany if economically feasible. We are committed to set up our indirect functions according to industry benchmark level. We will relocate and bundle more functions in lower-cost countries and source additional services from external suppliers. We will streamline all our current organizational structures, consolidate teams, and increase the span of control in all areas. Besides this, we are going to implement a lean headquarter in which only true global governance functions will be allocated. All the above-described measures will lead to a significant reduction of internal workforce at our German locations in our indirect as well as our direct functions and areas.
Together with the Works Council, we have agreed upon the extension of our current Securing the Future, so-called Zukunftssicherung agreement, a collective labor agreement that excludes and forces terminations for all employees in Germany until the end of 2034. Within this agreement, we have defined a clear process and measures on how to reduce the German workforce. As a result of this planned headcount reduction, we will recognize a provision for severance payments in the mid-three-digit million range in the second quarter. This will be treated as an adjusted item with no significant cash impact in 2025. In addition to the above-outlined lever set, the reduction of material cost will play an important role in reducing our annual recurring cost base by more than EUR 1 billion latest by the year 2030.
Now, after we have agreed on the framework conditions, we are fully focused on the execution of the Cost Down Europe measures. We will provide you with more details, including the ramp-up of savings over the years at our Capital Market Day in July. Turning to developments in our key markets during the first quarter. In North America, the Class 6-8 market declined 5% year over year, totaling 99,000 units. A primary driver of this decline is the increased uncertainty in the U.S. economy. Additionally, the Mexican truck market was particularly weak following the transition to Euro 6 emission standards at the start of the year and the preceding pre-buy activities in 2024. The heavy-duty market in North America reached 65,000 units in Q1, a 10% decline year over year. Despite these market headwinds, we maintained our strong competitive position.
Our Class 8 market share stood at 41.9%, underscoring our clear leadership position and the fact that our vocational strategy continues to deliver solid results. In Europe, overall demand in the medium and heavy-duty truck market declined by 15% in the first quarter, totaling 80,000 units. The heavy-duty market mirrored this trend, also decreasing by 14% to 72,000 units. Our heavy-duty market share in Europe came in at 14.2%. We are continuing to prioritize profitability over market share, and also our production was impacted by the ramp-up of new products. Looking ahead, we are confident in our ability to regain momentum starting in the second quarter. With the rollout of new products, most notably the new Actros L, we expect to strengthen our market position again. Now let's take a closer look at the development of unit sales and order intake in the first quarter.
Overall, we recorded a book-to-build ratio of 103% across all unit sales, which went down by 8% to 29,800 units, while incoming orders declined 3% year over year to 103,000 units. At Trucks North America, both unit sales and incoming orders were impacted by the recent contraction in the U.S. market, decreasing by 16% and 29% respectively. Mercedes-Benz Trucks saw a year-over-year decline of 18% in unit sales for the quarter. However, in the first quarter, we saw a positive trend in incoming orders with an increase of 9% versus prior year Q1. In EMEA, sales were down by 27% year-over-year on tough comps due to a still strong first quarter in 2024. Within that, Germany saw an even sharper decline of 43%. However, order activity in EMEA rose sharply, up 40% year-over-year, with March marking the second-best month for the region in the past 12 months.
is an increasing uncertainty going forward based on the declining sentiment regarding the global economic development. India, as we communicated last quarter, is now included in the segment and recorded a 14% decrease in unit sales, totaling just shy of 6,500 units. Also, overall, the India market slightly increased. Sales have been impacted by a market shift towards the 16-19 ton segment. Meanwhile, Latin America continued its positive momentum, with sales up by 11%. At the same time, there are slowdown signs due to macroeconomic factors, particularly in Brazil. At Trucks Asia, unit sales in the first quarter totaled 24,800 units, representing a strong 16% increase year-over-year on low comps. This growth was primarily driven by higher deliveries to Indonesia. Orders also developed positively, increasing 35% versus last year's quarter one. Turning to Daimler Buses, unit sales exceeded Q1 2024 levels by 11%, while incoming orders declined by 9%.
All in all, the sales and order momentum in the bus segment has stabilized at strong levels following the post-Covid recovery we have seen over the past years. Year to date, we have sold 759 battery electric trucks and buses, compared to 813 in the same period last year. Order intake for zero-emission vehicles also remained relatively stable at 1,266 units. Today, we have 11 emission-free truck and bus models in production, including our eActros 600 for long-distance transport in Europe, which has been well received by customers. A few weeks ago, at the Bauma Trade Fair in Munich, we introduced our eArocs 400. With this truck, we are now also bringing electrification to the important construction segment. Since the introduction of our first e-counters in 2017, we have successfully delivered over 10,000 zero-emission vehicles to date, meaning in terms of vehicles, the product transformation is in full swing.
However, our customers will not be able to buy these vehicles in large numbers as long as the equally important charging infrastructure is not in place. As of today, infrastructure remains the bottleneck to accelerating ZEV adoption. The numbers make this very clear, and even if many of you know them by now, I would like to repeat them once more because there is high need to act here. To meet the European CO2 targets by 2030, about 35,000 public fast charging points need to be in place. Today, we have far less than 1,000. The infrastructure buildup, therefore, urgently needs to pick up pace. This is a collective challenge. We urge all stakeholders, industry, policymakers, utilities, and infrastructure providers to step up and work together on building a truly robust green energy ecosystem. At Daimler Truck, we remain committed to being part of the solution.
We are launching pilot infrastructure projects, and we continue to actively engage with partners, policymakers to drive progress. In the coalition agreement in Germany, we also see steps in the right direction. It includes a clear commitment to accelerating the infrastructure buildup for both battery and hydrogen, and the parties of the new government see the need to pull forward the revision of the CO2 targets. These are the right signals, but in the next step, they need to be further substantiated. Now let's have a look at our financial performance for the quarter. At group level, adjusted EBIT declined by 4% year-over-year, coming in at EUR 1.2 billion. Looking at the contributions from our segments, Trucks North America, Daimler Buses, Trucks Asia, and Financial Services contributed positively to the overall result. Mercedes-Benz Trucks was the only segment with a negative contribution on tough comps.
As a result, adjusted EBIT for the industrial business declined by 4% year-over-year to EUR 1.1 billion in the first quarter. Trucks North America delivered a strong performance in quarter one, an adjusted EBIT of EUR 778 million, and an adjusted return on sales of 14.4%. While the contraction in the U.S. market had a significant negative impact on volumes, we also saw increased R&D spending. These effects were more than offset by several key positives. We benefited from an extraordinarily favorable customer mix, with more sales to smaller fleet customers and a lower share of mega fleets. We also had a strong product mix with more heavy-duty on-highway and vocational trucks and fewer medium-duty trucks. Our value-based pricing and high Detroit captive powertrain penetration rate also contributed favorably, as did the solid performance of the used truck business and sustained high operational efficiency.
Finally, we had a positive one-time warranty effect from vendor recovery. As expected, Mercedes-Benz Trucks had a slow start into the year with an adjusted EBIT of EUR 238 million and an adjusted return on sales of 5.4%. The main drag on profitability in quarter one came from the EMEA region. This demonstrates that we still need to increase our resilience in Europe. We now will execute decisively on Cost Down Europe to reduce our cost base. Outside of Europe, the picture was more encouraging. Our Latin American business remains accretive to the segment. India had a dilutive effect of approximately 10 basis points following its integration into the segment. That said, we continue to see strong long-term growth potential in India. On the EBIT side, we saw positive contributions from pricing in Latin America, reduced SG&A expenses, and a mid-double-digit million one-time impact from releases of warranty provisions.
However, these positives were not sufficient to offset the headwinds we faced. Lower volumes led to an underutilization in production. On top of that, we incurred ramp-up costs related to the launch of the new eActros 600 and Actros L, as well as higher R&D expenses. Trucks Asia reported an adjusted EBIT of EUR 64 million and an adjusted return on sales of 5.4% in the quarter. This is a good performance in a challenging environment, and it was supported by positive pricing, continued growth in after-sales, and lower SG&A expenses, which helped offset impacts from ongoing foreign exchange pressures and cost headwinds. Overall volumes increased on low comps, but this was offset by an unfavorable sales mix development. Daimler Buses more than doubled adjusted EBIT in Q1 compared to prior year, with EUR 126 million reaching a return on sales of 9.4%.
Higher volumes contributed favorably to EBIT, as did a more favorable product mix. We also saw improved pricing and better production utilization. We were able to better leverage best cost production facilities. Foreign exchange was a headwind in quarter one. Overall, this clearly demonstrates that our bus business is back on track, delivering strong results. Looking ahead, a solid order backlog and largely filled production slots for 2025 highlight the strong demand and positive momentum in the segment. This excellent performance came just in time to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Mercedes-Benz and Setra being under one roof at Daimler Buses, a significant milestone we are very proud of. Let's move to our financial services business. Adjusted EBIT increased slightly year-over-year from EUR 51 million to EUR 55 million, as continued improvements in volume and margin offset the higher cost of credit risk.
However, adjusted return on equity decreased from 8.2%- 7.3%, mainly due to the capital injection made last year to support our S&P rating upgrade to A-. The high level of macroeconomic uncertainty further burdens the persistent difficult credit situation, particularly in North America. Due to the ongoing freight recession, we no longer expect an easing of the negative credit cycle in the second half of 2025. As expected, the first quarter cash generation saw typical seasonal effects in working capital, mainly from inventory buildup, most notably at Mercedes-Benz Trucks and Daimler Buses, resulting in a total working capital increase of EUR 304 million. Net investments in property, plant and equipment, and intangible assets continued to weigh on cash generation, amounting to EUR 380 million.
These investments reflect our commitment to further growth and innovation, such as the battery cell manufacturing joint venture Amplify, the charging infrastructure joint venture Milans, and continued development in fuel cell technology. As a result, cash flow before interest and taxes of the industrial business came in at EUR 268 million. Deducting cash taxes of EUR 170 million and effects from interest payments, pensions, and other reconciling items, we arrive at a free cash flow of the industrial business of EUR 33 million. Adjusted for M&A transactions and restructuring measures, free cash flow stood at EUR 143 million. At the end of Q1, industrial net liquidity amounted to EUR 7.9 billion, down from EUR 8.6 billion at the end of Q4 and EUR 9.4 billion at the end of Q1 2024.
As a reminder, the group has paid EUR 1.5 billion in dividends and EUR 1.1 billion in share buybacks over the last 12 months, and we clearly aim to continue our strong cash return policy to shareholders. Let's move on to the outlook for the full year 2025. As always, our guidance is subject to further macroeconomic and geopolitical developments. Potential financial implications regarding the way forward for our China business are not included. They are contingent on the outcome of ongoing discussions with our joint venture partner. As mentioned before, restructuring expenses from the Cost Down Europe program are expected to be in the mid-three-digit million range. They are a special impact to be adjusted from EBIT in quarter two, with no significant cash impact in 2025.
We have adjusted our volume guidance for the North American market to the range of 260,000-290,000 units, reflecting the implications of the current market dynamics and heightened demand uncertainty. The EU30 heavy-duty market guidance remains unchanged at 270,000-310,000 units. As the macro environment in the U.S. has come under pressure, we have reduced our unit sales expectations for North America. For Trucks North America, we now expect 155,000-175,000 units. This assumes increasing customer confidence and order behavior from current low levels. Despite our reduced unit sales predictions, we still expect a profitability for the full year in the range between 11%-13%, underlining the strong resilience of our North American business. Under the assumption that we will be able to continue to operate under USMCA, we expect profitability for the full year in the lower half of this range.
This remains subject to further changes of the tariff environment and resulting macroeconomic effects. For the second quarter, we expect Trucks North America volumes to remain roughly in line with quarter one. With a more usual customer mix, we expect profitability lower than in Q1, but still towards the upper end of the full year margin corridor. At our full year disclosure in March, we anticipated the second half of the year to be stronger than the first. Due to the deteriorating market conditions, we now expect unit sales for the second half of 2025 on a similar level as in the first half. Margins will probably be lower in the second half of the year.
As a result of the aforementioned uncertainties surrounding the macroeconomic situation in North America and the resulting negative impact on cost of risk, we are revising our full year outlook for financial services from a return on equity of 8-10% to 6-8%. For the second quarter, we expect return on equity around last year's quarter two level due to the impact of the mentioned increased market risk in the U.S. on our cost of risk provisioning model. For all our other segments, the full year guidance remains unchanged. To complete our outlook for the second quarter, we expect group sales at Mercedes-Benz Trucks to be above quarter one, around 20-25% higher. Profitability at Mercedes-Benz Trucks is expected to be at a similar level as in quarter one.
At Trucks Asia, we expect group sales in the second quarter to be in line with the first quarter, with profitability anticipated to be within the lower half of the full year guidance range. Finally, for Daimler Buses, we expect higher group sales and profitability for quarter two at the top end of the full year guidance range. Given the reduced volume expectations in North America, we now anticipate the following impacts at the group level. Adjusted EBIT for the group is now expected to come in between -5% and +5% year over year. Unit sales have been lowered to the range of 430,000-460,000 units. Revenue for the industrial business is now forecasted at EUR 48 billion-EUR 51 billion. Our outlook for free cash flow for the industrial business remains unchanged, with a decrease between 10%-25%.
Free cash flow will be back and loaded towards the second half of the year. We have demonstrated also last year that the group has a track record of delivering a strong cash conversion towards the end of the year following typical seasonal patterns. As stated during our full year disclosure in March, we still expect an operationally stable 2025 compared to 2024, with adjusted return on sales of the industrial business between 8-10%. This is a strong testament to our improved margin resilience. Given the relative importance of our North American business to the overall group results, the fluctuations in the $/EUR exchange rate could significantly impact the group's financial performance, primarily through translation effects. Before I conclude, I would like to remind you of our upcoming Capital Market Day on July 8th in Charlotte, North Carolina. We look forward to seeing you there.
As previously announced, we will provide an update on our group strategy and long-term shareholder value drivers. This updated strategy is designed to strengthen Daimler Truck and position us as the world's best truck and bus company for our customers, shareholders, and employees. With that, I now look forward to answering your questions.
Thank you very much, Eva. Ladies and gentlemen, you may ask your questions now. The operator will identify the questioners by name, but please also introduce yourself and the organization you are representing. A few practical points. As always, please ask your questions in English. As a matter of fairness, please limit the amount of questions to a maximum of two. Now, before we start, the operator will explain the procedure.
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session.
Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one on the touch-tone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered a queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. If you are using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selection. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. Please mute the sound of the internet stream while you are asking a question on your telephone. One moment for the first question. The first question comes from Nikolai Kempf from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning. It's Nikolai here from Deutsche Bank. Thank you for taking my question and, well done for a strong start to the year. Two questions from my side.
First, starting with North America, your guidance does assume that orders will pick up in the coming months. Have you already seen this trend in May? I know it's kind of early in the month, but still would be nice to hear first comment on that. Also, staying in North America, you highlight that Q2, the probability will likely be at the upper end of the segment guidance. What's driving this? Because I'm still wondering how much backlog you have left. That would be just interesting to have a bit more cut on that. Thank you.
Hi, Nikolai. Thanks a lot for your questions and the positive feedback. First question, I think it's an obvious one. How do we see the order situation in North America right now?
I guess everybody has seen also the ACT order report on April orders in the market, and that has been extremely low. We did see that also over the last couple of weeks that momentum has really stalled with many customers taking a wait-and-see approach. The question is now, will we get back to the decent levels of quarter one? We do believe that despite uncertainties, the market demand is still there, and we're really staying focused on executing our strategy and not overreacting to market volatilities. What we also do see is that we have also smaller fleets that are ordering right now. In this uncertain environment, they're buying because certain of their customers are not impacted by tariffs or economic uncertainty, and some of them are also replacing older equipment, which they couldn't get during the capacity constraint years.
We do believe there is a possibility, obviously, that orders will pick up in the course of quarter two. When we look now at the news flow over the last couple of days with the temporary agreement that the U.S. and China have reached on tariffs, that could also give positive impulses in that regard, but of course, a bit early to tell. That has not obviously translated into orders just yet. Also, on your second question on the profitability for the upper end in the second quarter, we are confident on that one because of our order book. The orders in quarter one were decent, and our quarter two from a production program is largely filled. That means we see this profitability also then in quarter two as largely secured.
We are encouraged by the April profitability that we have also already delivered. This is something where we have the backlog for, but then obviously when we look at quarter three and four, this is not filled yet. That is only partially filled, and for that, we then need a stronger order momentum to come in.
Got it. Thank you, and look forward to seeing you in Charlotte.
Yes, me too. Thank you.
The next question comes from Miguel Borrega from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. I have got a few. On North America, there is obviously investigation of Section 232. Have you calculated potential impacts if tariffs are applied in the same way as, for example, light-duty trucks? Even if you are USMCA compliant, can you quantify that?
Miguel, thank you for your question.
Obviously, we're looking a lot into what's happening right now, also the Section 232 investigation. I think you will understand, these are highly volatile times, which make it difficult to predict anything. What I can say is that we're not too concerned about the Section 232 investigation, as we believe it would be difficult to assert that trucks made in Mexico present a threat to national security in the U.S. What we believe is that we think USMCA will continue. The agency has already started taking input on changes. We do believe that they will potentially make it more strict, so to require a higher use U.S. content, which is something that we could adapt to then.
We really have also demonstrated in quarter one, and we expect to demonstrate in quarter two that we have a high flexibility in our production network, and that is key for our operational efficiency. We can really quickly ramp up or down, with also bringing our costs then down accordingly if we have to adjust volumes. Potential adaptations to USMCA, we believe that would provide us still with the regulated framework that we're used to, and that we could operate in efficiently. It's too early to speculate about impacts. Obviously, we have calculated many, many scenarios, but as I said, if the direction would be just requiring a higher U.S. content, we believe that's something that we could deal with. Okay.
A follow-up to what you just said, if you indeed increase the content from the U.S., how do you maintain your competitiveness or your cost advantage relative to your peers who do not have any Mexican or almost any Mexican production?
Yes. I mean, obviously that also has an impact on the supply chain. Also, our suppliers are fully complying with USMCA. This is all clearly documented, so we have some possibilities to adjust something there. I just like to emphasize if USMCA continues, which currently looks like a realistic scenario, then we will be continuing to produce a portion of our products in Mexico, and we will continue to have a benefit from that.
What's also important to note is that also with U.S. production right now and also peers of us who produce in the U.S., they also have higher costs right now because of tariffs. It's something that really affects all of us in the market, maybe not equally, but it all affects us, and the market will have to adapt to that.
Thank you. Then just one question on Mercedes-Benz. I know you don't disclose European orders, but overall, Mercedes-Benz orders were up 9%. I imagine in Europe would be double-digit up for the second straight quarter. Correct me if I'm wrong. What prevents you from becoming more optimistic in the European outlook?
Yes. When we look at the first quarter orders and also the orders that we've received in the last couple of weeks in Europe, we are cautiously optimistic, so to say.
If that trend continues, we do believe there will be a stronger second half of the year when it comes to volumes and to profitability, which is also what we have considered in our guidance. We also see that our new products, the eActros 600, but of course, when it comes to volumes, especially the Actros L, is being well received in the market, and we believe that then translating into sales in quarter two and the second half of the year. Cautiously optimistic, I would say. Let's give us a few more weeks before we call it a trend, but so far, we do see it moving into the right direction.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Shaqeal Kirunda from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. I'm Shaqeal from Morgan Stanley.
It seems to be a 5 percentage point decline in the EU30 heavy-duty market share. Would you please explain some of the drivers here and whether this is a temporary effect?
Yes, Shaqeal, hi. Thank you for your question. Yes, you noticed that correctly. I also commented on it in my speech. Obviously, this does not come now as an unexpected effect because we know that we had very low order intakes last year. Also then quarter two, quarter three, and coming into quarter four still. This we see now in our unit sales, and that translates into a lower market share. We do believe that it will get better, with the rollout of the new product as we started delivering the eActros L as our new flagship product beginning of the year.
We do see when we look now at April that this is slightly picking up, but it will take a while to gradually regain some market share. As I also said in my speech, we are continuing to put in profitability over market share. Market share is, it's not that it doesn't matter, but we're not willing to start excessive discounting activities in order to buy market share.
Understood. One more for me. Can you please tell us a bit more about the flexibility measures you have in Trucks North America and how you plan to deploy some of these? Like, if orders do not inflect by mid-June, for example, do you then start to reduce capacity?
Yes. We have already started to deploy these flexibility measures in North America.
There we have, also in the U.S., we have labor agreements in place that enable us to ramp down capacity and also reduce wages as a part of that. In particular, in Mexico, we are very flexible. For example, if we close down for a week, then we also only have to pay 50% in wages to then really be able that we do not have significant underutilization effect. We have not been in a position yet where we had to release people, which we have also heard in the market, but we have not because so far we are managing it well with having shutdown days, and that will also get us well through quarter two. As I said before, quarter two is largely filled when we look at our production program. We have good visibility there.
Of course, should orders not pick up now in the next couple of weeks, we will also look at further adjusting capacities in the second half. I believe our quarter one profitability on low volumes and also our guidance for the quarter two margin to still be in the upper end of the margin range for North America demonstrates that we can operate highly profitably in a highly profitable way also in the current environment with low volumes. Just to remind you, volumes for North America in quarter one, we expect them to be more or less in line with quarter one. With that capacity, we can manage it well.
Should it now get to a situation where the second half of the year is weaker than the first half, we also have clear measures in place how we can adjust that. We're still, of course, safeguarding profitability levels.
Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Klas Bergelind from Citi. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Hi, Eva and Christian, Klas at Citi. I just want to come back to North America again. A lot of questions here, but what you said, Eva, just to confirm, on the warranty release, I think you said a mid-double-digit impact in Mercedes-Benz. What did you say for North America? Did you say that the full year margin would be at the lower end of the 11%-13% range? I heard you on the second quarter. Just confirm the full year comment. Thank you.
Hi, Klas.
Thanks for your question. You're right about the impact in MB. It's a mid-double-digit impact. Also, the positive impact from vendor recovery in the U.S. is a mid-double-digit million impact. I guess that answers your question. I think the second part of your question was the full year impact of the margin. Yes, let me explain that in a bit more detail just to make it very clear for North America. What have we considered in the guidance now? Obviously, we guide the market in North America for Class 8 at a midpoint of 275,000 units. If that happens, then we are confident that we will reach the unit sales that we are guiding from 155,000-175,000 units.
That would mean volume-wise, first half of the year comparable to the second, but the margin in the second half of the year would probably be lower because we've started the year extremely strong with a very, very favorable business mix, with that impact from vendor recovery. I also want to say, even if I exclude that impact from vendor recovery, we'd still be above the top end of the guidance range in quarter one, and then quarter two still being at the upper end of the guidance range for DTNA, but if you do the math in the second half, could be a bit lower. Now the question is, what have we considered when it comes to tariffs? We have considered that USMCA holds for the year as it is currently in place.
We have considered the tariffs that are currently in place. That means the 25% for steel, aluminum, copper. It also means the 10% retaliatory tariffs that we have in place now for the 90 days. We have simulated that for the full year and the China tariffs that are currently in place. With that, we expect to be at the lower end of the 11%-13% range, which I believe is an extremely strong statement.
Yeah. Okay, very clear. Just on Section 232, obviously the consultations are ending here in May, but if you look at sort of previous discussions, this can be a quite lengthy process. Even if it turns out to be negative, I do not know what you think about timing here, but I mean, it might actually run into year-end or into 2026.
I don't know if you have any comment there.
It's so difficult to make predictions nowadays. Everything can change quickly. The good thing about it is that it seems to be an orderly process where we can also present our input and where we will have then, if there are adaptations, as I said, potentially requiring higher U.S. content, to have clear calculation methods behind, to have clear documentation methods behind that we are very used to, that our suppliers are very used to, and that we would also hope, of course, to have some time to implement so that it wouldn't happen overnight.
Okay, my second and final one is on the cash flow. It's typically weaker in the first quarter, but cash flow now, at least against what I thought, even more back and loaded.
You're obviously lowering the EBIT guide on the volume decline, but you're not lowering the cash flow guide. I mean, your range is much wider on cash flow, of course. Are we saying that we're going to see cash flow down at the higher end of the decline? Down 25%, down to around EUR 2.3 billion. Obviously, on top of that, you will have cash out to restructuring, but that will come later as it is a provision. I'm keen on the sort of, yeah, the free cash flow for the year, if you could give an indication, Eva. Thank you.
Yeah, sure. As you rightfully stated, the guidance corridor is fairly broad with minus 10% to minus 25%, which is also why we did not see a need to adjust it. Obviously, yeah, we will probably slide down a bit within that bandwidth.
Of course, also with the lower sales volume, we have the ambition for a lower working capital, which is expected to result in a slightly positive effect. Of course, we will even be more cautious on spending and early collection in these uncertain times that we're in. In quarter one, cash flow was clearly also burdened by the production ramp-up of our new products, the Actros L and the eActros 600 mainly. We will work heavily on getting that down again. Yeah, it's also realistic to say that probably will still be back and loaded towards the end of the year.
Super quick final on the PSO. Obviously, transactional effects, PSO down a lot year- over- year. Did you get any benefit in Trucks North America from that at the EBIT level?
I mean, we're not disclosing the exact effect, but there are positive effects from that coming in, but they're not major.
All right. Thank you.
The next question comes from Michael Aspinal from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Yes, good morning, Eva and Christian. Michael here from Jefferies. Just two from me. I'll stick to two. Can you step through Mercedes-Benz orders with the segment plus 9%? I think you said EMEA was plus 40%. Maybe you can just touch on the other moving parts for Mercedes-Benz so we can kind of round out what orders look like for this segment geographically. Can you touch on Germany as well?
Yes, Michael, thanks for your question. You summed up EMEA already. In Brazil, we did see orders come down year over year.
However, there's a special effect in there because we're shifting from build to stock to build to order, which is affecting that number. Overall, we see some slowdown effects in the macroeconomic environment in Brazil, but we're actually looking at our business and our customers. We're still fairly optimistic about the year and the positive contribution. Also, from a profitability perspective, Brazil is highly accretive right now to the segment. In India, we had a bit of a slow start, but we do believe that we'll get better. Obviously, the effect of India on the segment overall is not that high. What we do see is that in Germany, we have an increase of 80% year over year in order. That is going into the right direction.
Okay, great. No, that's super useful. And then one on the agreement with the works councils.
Can you get, I know you're probably going to talk about this at the CMD, but I'm wondering what you can share with us now in terms of where margins could go in Europe or maybe where margins need to move back towards to have employee profit sharing kind of get back to what it was previously. I imagine that was part of the parts of the discussions.
Okay. Obviously, the full details you will get at the Capital Market Day. What I can say is that obviously, when it comes to reducing our labor costs in Germany, it was important for us to have a profit sharing model that is aligned with the targets we set for profitability for the Mercedes-Benz Trucks segment in Europe.
I can say that it is now really geared towards achieving a much higher level of profitability than where we are, with the overreaching principle of closing the performance gap to our best performing peers. This is how it is all structured towards. At the CMD, we will then, of course, present you with a strategy how Mercedes-Benz Trucks as a total segment will move in that direction of closing that profitability gap to the best performing peers, of which Cost Down Europe will be an important part. Of course, there are also other initiatives that we will share.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you. The next question comes from Akshat Kacker from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, Akshat from JP Morgan. I have three questions, please.
The first one is sorry to come back on tariffs that are in force in the market since March. Could you just give us more details in terms of the impact on the business that you have already seen in Q1? In what shape and form has it impacted your P&L or cash flow or the supply chains? How do you expect this cost item to evolve as we go into Q2, please? The second question is on inventories. In the last two quarters, you have produced over and above your retail sales and orders. Could you just talk about the inventory situation at a company level and even at the dealer level if you're comfortable with the overall inventories in the channel, please? The third question is on capital allocation. You, as you said, you're at the tail end of your two-year share buyback program.
Could you tell us how you're thinking about the balance sheet going forward and if you have talked about minimum liquidity or cash that you want to hold on the industrial balance sheet, please? Thank you so much.
Thank you, Akshat, for your question. Let me start on the first one on tariffs. The impact on the P&L was minor. In quarter one, we had basically nothing to mention there yet, but the impact on demand, we could for sure see and the uncertainty in the market that it has created in particular in the U.S. We did not see any major supply chain impact. Of course, over the last couple of weeks, we have been closely monitoring the situation in particular related to rare earth. At the moment, we see a path how we can manage that, but of course, it will remain volatile.
As I answered before to Klas, we have considered the current level of tariffs that are in place right now as the basis for our full-year guidance. This is what we have considered. Maybe I first do the capital allocation question. Yes, our current share buyback program will run until August. Of course, we are also looking into the framework going forward, also when it comes to net industrial liquidity targets and so on. You can expect an update on that at our CMD. At the moment, it is too early. I would kindly ask you to wait for about two months and then we can discuss. On the inventory side, what I can say in the U.S., of course, we have been having inflated inventory levels on the dealer side.
What we can also say is that has been also driven by a change in mix because with more vocational business coming in and especially a significant growth that we have shown on the vocational side, that leads also to increased dealer stock because the vehicles take longer to be at the bodybuilders before they actually reach our customers. We do see that inventory levels in the U.S. are still at a high level comparably, but also slightly coming down sequentially. When it comes to our own inventories in our books, we do see that we obviously brought them down quite significantly at the end of quarter four. Now, as I explained before, also because of ramp-up of new products and so on, we have increased them temporarily again and will bring them back down over the course of the year.
Thank you so much.
The next question comes from Daniela Costa from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. I just have one last and wanted to follow up back on some of the points of discussion in North America on the strong margins that you had this quarter. You mentioned right at the beginning the mix, you also mentioned efficiency. Thanks for clarifying on the vendor financing, by the way. Can you maybe give us a sense of what of those two things was a bigger contributor, and particularly on the mix? How do you see the sustainability of that? Is the order recovery that you see potentially going forward more of those smaller, higher margin customers, or is that more fleets if you can help us there? Thank you.
Hi, Daniela. Thanks for your question. The vendor, you mentioned vendor financing.
I think I have to clarify there. It was really a vendor recovery, where we recovered money from one of our suppliers for defects that happened in the past. That was a one-off thing. Also, without that, as I said before, our profitability in North America would have been slightly above 13%. That means special impact there, but still strong performance. The mix certainly was a big effect in quarter one with more smaller fleets compared to the mega fleets, less medium duty. We see this a bit normalizing into quarter two, but still having a good mix in quarter two and, as I said, still being at the upper end of the margin corridor in quarter two. Now the question is, how will it continue in the second half?
As I said, quarter two is largely filled when it comes to the production program, quarter three and four partially. That is where we have to see what orders will come in. Of course, we do hope the large fleets will start ordering again if the economic momentum improves. That would then, of course, lead to slightly lower margins in the second half of the year. You can do the math if we end up even in the lower half of the margin guidance range, that would still be a very strong result on the volumes that we are operating on. Sorry, how much was pricing and how do you see that one going forward? Pricing was a net positive pricing impact in quarter one. That is what we generally see continuing also in quarter two.
As I said, we have very high visibility into quarter two. Now it depends what happens to market. If there's a disaster scenario and everything comes crashing down and nobody orders, of course, that's a difficult situation. If we achieve the volumes and if we reach the market class 8 orders of 275,000, we do believe there will also be still a net positive pricing effect for the year.
Got it. Thank you.
The next question comes from Hemal Bhundia from UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi, Eva. Hi, Christian. Thank you for taking my question. Firstly, just a quick question on free cash flow. I noticed that there was a line called other, which saw a large outflow. Just wondering if you could explain what that is.
There was obviously an effect of non-cash items that we had in our EBIT.
Also, the biggest one being release of some warranty accruals in North America, but also in Mercedes-Benz standard process of obviously reducing our provisioning models. That is something that is not free cash flow relevant.
Thank you. I just wanted to touch on Mercedes-Benz very quickly. In terms of the margin profiles for Brazil, Europe, and India, I appreciate you've mentioned in the past that Brazil is, or sorry, Latin America is more margin accretive. Is having a great exposure to Europe the reason why margins are expected to be largely flat in Q2? Thanks.
The reason, yes, it is part of the reason. Obviously, we are going to see a growth in quarter two compared to quarter one when it comes to volumes, and Europe will have a good contribution to that.
What we just discussed when it comes to the release of warranty provisions in quarter one, that had a mid double-digit EUR million impact in quarter one. That is something that we will not probably have in quarter two. That explains why we expect to be on a similar profitability level.
Understood. Thank you.
The next question comes on Jonathan Day from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Yes, it is Jonathan from HSBC. Thanks for taking my questions. I was wondering if you could just talk a little bit more, perhaps give us a bit more color about the cost of the ramp-up for the new models in Europe and how you see those sort of fading perhaps over the second half and impacting margins. That is the first one.
And then maybe a second one, just a bit more color on the U.S. credit cycle and that sort of lower guidance and what you're seeing in financial services. Thanks.
Thanks, Jonathan, for your question. Yeah, cost of ramp-up for the new models, I would say it's all running fairly well. You always have some hiccups when you start producing a new truck. We've also then managed it fairly well by the end of the quarter. I think we will gain maturity there during quarter two and probably will then get to a more stable mode again in the second half of the year. Yes, that's something that you can consider from a cost perspective.
Of course, it will come with increased efficiencies, but we also need that then to be able to ramp up the volumes that we do expect in production in the second half of the year. On the U.S. credit cycle, yes, we did expect that to develop differently when we started the year because we thought there would be an easing of the freight recession and cost of risk going down. Now, unfortunately, it seems like we will see that sticking around for longer. Of course, due to the macroeconomic situation deteriorating, we have to look at our provisioning models now, again, also over the course of quarter two, which will have a negative impact, which is why we reduced the guidance for financial services.
It is a direct result of the market development in North America with our financial services business being extremely geared towards North America.
Okay, thanks.
The next question comes from Nick Housden from RBC. Please go ahead.
Hi, Nick Housden from RBC. Thank you for taking my questions. My first one is whether you could provide some comments about, I guess, your North American market share strategy because the market outlook for the year has been cut by 25,000 units at the midpoint. That is the same as your cut in TNA unit expectations. I am just wondering if we can kind of infer something about a Daimler strategy regarding possibly ceding market share to maintain price discipline in the market. I am just curious about some thoughts there. Thanks.
Sure. Thanks, Nick. Good question. I just want to emphasize the market guidance at the midpoint of EUR 275,000 units.
That's class eight. Our unit sales guidance of 155,000-175,000. That's everything. Obviously, we've looked at it in detail. You also need to consider that the medium duty market was extremely strong last year, it's getting weaker now. If we all take that into account, our guidance on our unit sales considers stable market shares. That's also what we see happening right now.
Okay, great. Just a follow-up on the North American positive mix effects from some of the smaller buyers being more active in the market. Is there a risk that this kind of extends the pain that we've been seeing in the freight market and just, you know, lengthens the amount of time that it takes the capacities to reduce that? Or is it primarily different segments that were buying units?
I'm not exactly sure whether I understood what you said, but I'll try to answer it. Of course, I think I answered it before also where we say where we see that the mix in quarter one was particularly strong. It will be a bit weaker in quarter two, but still strong. We expect the large fleets ordering again. I think what's important to know when we talk about our strength in North America and why we're so resilient there, which you see with our quarter one result and also the guidance, is we have an extremely strong customer mix and loyalty in the U.S. We have now a very strong vocational business. We have a competitive cost structure. We have an efficient production network with an extremely high flexibility to ramp up or down in short notice.
That will be a key success factor now with that uncertainty about volumes. We can ramp further down if needed and bring costs down quickly, but we can also ramp up quickly. We have a high captive powertrain penetration rate. We have not talked about that in this call yet, but I mentioned it in my speech. That was a major impact for quarter one also where we saw on the vocational side and on the class 8 side, our captive penetration rate going up, which really speaks to the quality of our Detroit powertrain and how well it is received in the market. We have a good and stable services and parts business. Last but not least, we have a very lean organization and a highly competitive cost base that we are constantly improving and optimizing.
Great. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Anthony Dick from ODDO. Please go ahead.
Yes, hi, just a couple remaining on my side. First, you mentioned the captive engine rate in North America. Could you just remind us where that stands today and where you expect this to go? And secondly, on the European cost reduction program, I was just wondering if you could tell us to what extent this can contribute in the short term, i.e., in the next couple of years and how significant that can be in the sort of intermediate years before the 2030 deadline. Thank you.
Thank you. Of course, happy to answer that. And I've said it in previous quarters on the captive powertrain penetration rate for our heavy-duty engine platform for our Cascadia, it's more than 90%. And also for vocational, we have moved now above 60%.
I've also explained before in various discussions that on vocational, it's still lower, but we're also moving into the right direction there, which is helping our margin contribution for the vocational business equally. On Cost Down Europe, there will be an impact in fiscal 2025, but it will not be a major one. You can expect that we will show you details on the ramp-up year over year at the Capital Markets Day as we have now come to an agreement. We start implementation basically now, calculate everything through again and pull forward as much as possible into the earlier years. We will share that with you and we can discuss at the CMD. Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press a star followed by one on your telephone.
The next question comes from Harry Martin from Bernstein. Please go ahead.
Oh, yes. Good morning, Harry from Bernstein. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one, just coming back onto the tariffs in the U.S., you obviously have a, you know, a position to see the cost difference between both the U.S. and the Mexico production. Can you confirm that the onset of the steel and aluminum tariffs and the continued USMCA compliance actually improved the relative cost position of your Mexico plants in Q1? Did you shift more production into Mexico in Q1? Is that part of the, you know, as part of the help to the margin? Would that also continue into Q2 as well? That's the first question that I have.
Thank you, Harry, for the question.
Please understand that we're not sharing more details than what we already have on that sensitive topic of tariffs. What I can say is that looking at the footprint that we have in the U.S. and in Mexico that has remained as it is, we have not done any shifts over the last couple of months. We're operating with the footprint that we have set up successfully over the last couple of years. What I can say overall about the steel and aluminum tariffs is that the impact of that one and related to U.S. and Mexico is not major.
Okay. A second question just on the free cash flow and an outlook for the investments for the rest of this year.
I guess it'd be useful to just get an overview of how you expect CapEx to develop, but also the investment into the JVs and associates. Do you still expect to close the software-defined vehicle JV with Volvo this year as an example?
The investment, and I already said that when we guided for the full year, we expect them to be on a comparably high level for this year. There's obviously also our investments into the transformation to decarbonization. These are reaching peak levels. I would say more or less stable developing quarter over quarter when we look at it globally. Of course, we're also looking at changes in the regulatory and political environment. We see how we adapt to that. That's also something we will discuss in detail at the capital markets day.
Your second question, yes, we expect to close the software-defined vehicle joint venture maybe also before the end of this year. Does that come with an upfront capital investment that's in within your guidance already? That is considered in our guidance. We're absolutely in line with the timeline that we had defined and that went into our planning.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for your questions and for being with us today. Thank you, Eva, for answering everything. After a short break, the Q&A call for media will start in approximately 10 minutes. Now, as always, IR remains at your disposal to answer any further questions you might have. We're looking forward to staying in touch with you. Otherwise, have a great day and stay healthy as always. Thank you and goodbye.