Distinguished shareholders, esteemed shareholder representatives, ladies and gentlemen. I hereby open the 2025 Annual General Meeting of Daimler Truck Holding AG. As Chairman of the Supervisory Board, I will be chairing and presiding over this meeting in accordance with the Articles of Incorporation. On behalf of the Supervisory Board and the Board of Management, I would like to welcome all shareholders and their proxies, as well as all guests who are following our Annual General Meeting online. Today, we will be reporting on the 2024 fiscal year of Daimler Truck Holding AG. Before I begin my remarks, I would like to emphasize that diversity, equal opportunity, and inclusion are important to us at Daimler Truck, and they will maintain their importance and relevance for us. For this reason, we will largely be using gender-neutral language throughout the Annual General Meeting.
In the interest of clarity and in compliance with legally required wording, such as established terms, we will be using the generic masculine in some parts of today's speeches. In these cases, the terms used include all gender identities without restrictions. Today's Virtual Annual General Meeting is being held at the company's administrative headquarters, the Daimler Truck Campus in Leinfelden-Echterdingen at Fasanenweg 10. I would like to welcome Karin Rådström, CEO, and Eva Scherer, who is responsible for finance and controlling on the Board of Management here in the hall. I would also like to welcome Michael Brecht, Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board. Mr. Brecht will stand in for me as Chairman of the Meeting in my absence. The other members of the Board of Management are also attending the Annual General Meeting here at the venue.
There's one exception, and that's John O'Leary, who is following the AGM from Portland, Oregon. He is joining us virtually. Some of the other members of the Supervisory Board are joining us virtually. John Kraftschik and Laura Ibsen are not able to attend for personal obligations or for reasons of health. Present here on stage are the Notary, Dr. Stephan Sünner, who will be notarizing the Annual General Meeting, and our Chief Legal and Compliance Officer, Dr. Florian Hofer. Finally, I would like to welcome the proxies appointed by the company, Dr. Stephan Schön and Bernhard Hauenschild. Esteemed shareholders, before I report on the work of the Supervisory Board in fiscal 2024, let me say a few words about the format and the agenda of today's AGM.
Based on the authorization granted by the Annual General Meeting in 2023, stipulated in Section 11, Subsection 3 of our company's Articles of Incorporation, the Board of Management has decided to hold the 2025 AGM virtually. You can submit your comments, questions, and motions to us, the Board of Management and the Supervisory Board live, via video communication during today's AGM through the Access Protected Investor Portal. I will discuss the other shareholder rights in more detail later. Today's Annual General Meeting was convened in uniform and time by announcement in the Federal Gazette on April 1st 2025. In addition to the announcement in the Federal Gazette, the convening of the Annual General Meeting was notified in uniform and time to the persons specified in Section 125 of the German Stock Corporation Act.
Since then, the convening notice, together with the documents to be made available and further information on the Annual General Meeting, has also been available from the company's website. In the run-up to the AGM, the company received one counter-motion from shareholder Matthias Lang and two counter-motions from the Association of Ethical Shareholders, Dachverband der Kritischen Aktionärinnen und Aktionäre, which had to be made available in accordance with Section 126 of the German Stock Corporation Act. These counter-motions were published on the company's website. We have also received a total of 19 written statements from shareholders or their proxies. These can be found in the Password Protected Investor Portal. Ladies and gentlemen, the entire AGM will be broadcast live in audio and video for our shareholders and their proxies via the Password Protected Investor Portal for the Annual General Meeting.
This option is available to you regardless of whether or not you have given notification of attendance for the Annual General Meeting. My introductory remarks and those of our CEO, Karin Rådström, will also be broadcast for other interested parties via the company's website. These two speeches will also be recorded and will be made available on the company's website at a later date. There you will also find the transcripts that were published in advance of today's Annual General Meeting. However, as a precaution, I would like to point out to you that all speeches must be checked against delivery. The other parts of the Annual General Meeting, such as the general debate, for example, will not be recorded. Audio and/or video recordings are not permitted. We have carefully checked the necessary technical arrangements for the live broadcast together with the service providers commissioned.
Should the live broadcast be interrupted unexpectedly, please bear with us and be patient. If the connection cannot be restored, we will provide you with further information via our investor portal and the company's website. We'll do that timely. If you experience individual technical problems, please contact our hotline directly. You will find the contact details on the company's website mentioned above. The list of participants can be viewed by registered shareholders or their proxies on the investor portal. The list includes the official company proxies and the shareholders and shareholder representatives who have logged into the Password Protected Investor Portal for the Annual General Meeting. The list will be updated continuously until the end of the AGM. I will announce the exact attendance figures later.
Shareholders who voted by postal vote or who vote by postal vote during the AGM will only be included in the list of participants if they have dialed into the Annual General Meeting via the investor portal. Irrespective of this, however, I will also announce the number of postal votes cast when I announce the attendance figures. Please note that the only valid list is the one available from the investor portal. Any form of photographing or other reproduction of the list of participants or misuse of the data contained therein is prohibited. That is in the interest of everyone. Dear shareholders, the agenda for our Annual General Meeting and the procedure will be as follows. Following my introductory remarks, CEO Karin Rådström will be reporting on the 2024 fiscal year. I will then provide an overview of the agenda.
In the interest of time, we will discuss all items on the agenda in one general debate. Following the general debate, we will vote on agenda items two to 10 in a single combined voting round. During the general debate, you will have the opportunity to speak live and address the Board of Management and the Supervisory Board for your questions regarding the agenda, provided that you have given notification of attendance for the AGM, of course, in accordance with the rules and are logged into the investor portal. The general debate will be held in German, but simultaneous translation from German into English will be available from the investor portal. I am looking forward to a lively and active live exchange with you.
As already announced in the invitation, I hereby stipulate that the right to information pursuant to Section 131, Subsection 1 of the German Stock Corporation Act, and the right to request information pursuant to Section 131(1)(d) of the German Stock Corporation Act may only be exercised by means of video communication. The law already stipulates that speeches and motions must be made by means of video communication. If you wish to speak, ask questions, or submit a motion at today's Annual General Meeting, please register your request in the investor portal via the menu item "Request to Speak" motion swiftly. Our virtual contact point for interventions is already open for you at 9:30.
We kindly ask you to register your interventions as early as possible so that we will have an idea of how many speakers we can expect during today's Annual General Meeting because we want to make sure that everybody has enough time for their intervention. You can register to speak during the Annual General Meeting as long as the list of speakers has not been closed. When registering your intervention, please also provide a telephone number which we can use to contact you in case of technical problems. Of course, hopefully, there will not be any. If you have submitted a request to speak in the investor portal, you will first be asked to enter our virtual waiting room. There, a function check of your video communication will take place. Only then will it be possible to connect you to the Annual General Meeting live.
Please understand that after you've submitted your request to speak, it may take some time before you'll be asked to enter the virtual waiting room. A live connection to the Annual General Meeting requires functional video communication between you, the shareholders, and the company. If this is not available or if it fails, we will unfortunately have to reject or prematurely terminate your speech. Further information and recommendations for optimal video communication and live participation are available from our website, the address of which we will now display again. When the general debate begins, I will call the first speakers. For the votes following the general debate, I will determine the type and form of voting as follows: in accordance with Article 14 of our Articles of Association. This year, voting will take place exclusively via the investor portal during the AGM.
Votes received in advance of the AGM by absentee vote or by proxy and instructions to the company's proxies will be, of course, taken into account. You can access the investor portal by using the data that we have sent to you. You may cast your vote by absentee vote, issue authorizations and instructions to the proxies, raise objections to the resolutions for the record, or make other statements. Authorizations and instructions to the proxies, as well as absentee votes, can still be issued, revoked, and changed via the investor portal until the times announced by me during the voting process. I will, of course, inform you of this in good time. The proxies appointed by the company will exercise the vote exclusively on the basis of the instructions issued by you.
However, we would like to make a request now: exercise your right to vote as early as possible. Please bear in mind that there may be a slight delay in transmission on the internet for technical reasons. I will inform you of this in good time and announce the time by which your vote must be cast. In the ballot, we will use the so-called addition procedure. I will explain this to you in detail before we proceed to the vote. When announcing the voting results, we will show you the detailed results. However, I intend to limit myself to stating that the required majority has been achieved unless this is contested in the debate. Registered shareholders or their authorized representatives may object to the resolutions of the AGM via our investment portal and have their objections recorded in the notary's minutes.
Objections may be raised until immediately before the closing of the Annual General Meeting, and I will draw attention to this again in due course. The company's proxies will not declare any objections on behalf of shareholders. That much on the proceedings. Now, shareholders, the 2024 fiscal year was an eventful year for the company, especially for its customers, employees, and its boards. The deterioration of the market environment also affected Daimler Truck. Revenue amounted to EUR 54.1 billion, a decrease of 3% compared to the record year 2023. The adjusted group EBIT of EUR 4.7 billion even fell by 15% compared to the record level of EUR 5.5 billion in 2023. It was not possible to fully offset significant declines in the European business by the strong performance of Trucks North America. However, cash inflows remained robust, and the company is operating solidly.
Therefore, the Board of Management and the Supervisory Board have decided to propose to the Annual General Meeting a dividend of EUR 1.9 per eligible share, thus maintaining a consistent level. The appointment of Karin Rådström as CEO of Daimler Truck and the appointment of Eva Scherer, CFO, initiated the generational change on the Board of Management, which continued with the appointment of Achim Puchert as CEO of the Mercedes-Benz Trucks division. By intensifying the negotiations on the intended merger of the two companies, Fuso, a Daimler Truck division, and Hino, a publicly listed company in Japan, largely controlled by Toyota, the Board of Management intends to optimize the company's portfolio. The ongoing geopolitical tensions and geoeconomic developments burdened customer demand behavior and increasingly created uncertainty, also technological, in the market. These developments intensified at the beginning of the new fiscal year, 2025.
The erratic movements in trade and customs policy, which have significant impacts on customer ordering behavior, globally oriented supply chains, and the technological developments of products are particularly in focus. The failure of Germany's three-party traffic light coalition and the associated uncertainty led to recessionary conditions in our German home market. These influences have significantly clouded the already subdued demand in Europe. Management has responded promptly and consistently to the developments and established the first building block of the new strategy with the newly launched efficiency program, Cost Down Europe. My thanks go to the colleagues of the General Works Council, who negotiated hard but constructively, enabling a swift agreement. The focus is now on the rapid and consistent implementation of the agreed measures. The Board of Management, led by Karin Rådström, is driving the substantive and cultural transformation of Daimler Truck prudently and decisively.
This is already evident in various areas, such as the consolidation of the Board Management's portfolios and their support functions. In addition, the leadership team is currently finalizing the key elements of the new corporate strategy. In addition to the already initiated efficiency program, Cost Down Europe, this strategy addresses customer satisfaction and growth, innovation and technology, supply chain and factor optimization, adaptability and resilience, as well as strengthening the performance and equity culture. The overall strategy will be presented to investors and the public at the Capital Market Day on July 8th 2025, in Charlotte, North Carolina. Now, let's turn to the work of the Supervisory Board in the past year. In the 2024 fiscal year, seven plenary meetings and a total of 17 meetings of the various committees took place.
The detailed report of the Supervisory Board can be found on pages 16 to 24 of the Daimler Truck annual report. There you will also find the declaration on corporate governance, which is why I will only focus on some key content points in the following. The core task of our work on the Supervisory Board is to continuously and actively advise the Board of Management on corporate management, provide support in risk management matters, and monitor their work within the set framework of the control system. Another focus is succession planning for the Board of Management and also, of course, of the Supervisory Board. The main focuses of the work in 2024 were: one, performance dialogue. The primary focus was on evaluating financial results compared to our own goals and the competition. We also dealt intensively with the company's strategic orientation.
This includes key topics for the success of the transformation in the commercial vehicle industry, such as locally emission-free vehicles and autonomous driving. Two, increasing resilience and value creation. I had said that in the beginning already. Geopolitical and geoeconomic developments have increased volatility and impaired previously seen stability of global supply chains. This represents significant changes for the company. Flexibility and agility are essential to ensure productivity. In dialogue with the Board of Management and its team, key elements for the long-term safeguarding of competitiveness, such as innovation, process efficiency, and supply chain security, were discussed. Although the company has already created substantial value for its shareholders, benchmarking continues to show significant potential. There is agreement between the Board of Management and the Supervisory Board on the goal of catching up with the leading margins in the industry in the mid to long term. Three, identifying growth opportunities.
One of the measures to support this goal is to strengthen growth dynamics. This applies to the North American market for vocational vehicles and the bus sector. Leading in the bus sector, we are not as good in the U.S. as we are in Europe, by the way. Leading innovations in the field of e-mobility created the award-winning eActros 600 as a real alternative to powerful diesel trucks. Accelerating the development of solutions for autonomous driving is both innovation and risk management. This area was a particular focus of the work of the Supervisory Board and, of course, as far as risk management is concerned, the Audit Committee. Four, generational change in the Board of Management. The year 2024 was marked by significant changes in the Board of Management team, with a new setup, strong personalities, more diversity, and a real generational change.
Eva Scherer was appointed CFO on the 1st of April, while Karin Rådström took over the CEO position on October 1st, 2024. The Supervisory Board continued the generational change by appointing Achim Puchert, a CEO of Mercedes-Benz Trucks, on the 1st of December. Our long-term CEO, Martin Daum, who successfully led the company to independence and soon after into the DAX 40, left the Board of Management on December 31st, 2024. During his tenure, Martin fundamentally shaped the company and developed it into a strong global player in the commercial vehicle industry. He has always been committed to the well-being of the company and its employees, and his impressive life's work deserves respect and great thanks. Five, environment, social, safety, and governance. Environment, social, and governance, as well as safety and well-being, continue to be important elements of corporate action and its oversight.
The Board of Management and Supervisory Board are aware that there are different viewpoints among shareholders and governments. Therefore, it is important to me to emphasize this. The company continues to act in accordance with international laws and standards. It serves its shareholders, customers, employees, and society. Free from ideology and guided by practical reason for the sustainable well-being of all shareholders.
Sixth, changes in the Supervisory Board and upcoming elections of shareholder representatives in 2026. At the end of the 2024 fiscal year, Roman Zitzelsberger resigned as an employee representative from the Supervisory Board. He was succeeded by Barbara Resch on January 1st, 2025. On June 30th, 2025, so in a few weeks' time, employee representative Andrea Wright will also step down from the Supervisory Board. She will be succeeded by Udo Roth, who was appointed by the court as of the 1st of July, 2025.
On the shareholder representative side, John Krawczyk resigned from his position on the 14th of April, 2025, with effect from the end of today's annual general meeting, indicating personal reasons. I will address his successor shortly. On behalf of my colleagues, I'd like to express a great word of thanks to Roman Zitzelsberger, Andrea Wright, and John Krawczyk for their dedicated and valuable service on the Supervisory Board. I warmly welcome Barbara Resch and Udo Roth to our Supervisory Board. It is very important to me that we work together in a trustful and constructive manner because this is an important prerequisite for accompanying the company's important strategic and transformative direction. This transformation that is ahead of us, in particular, the Nomination Committee of the Supervisory Board, therefore, also continuously deals with succession issues and is therefore also prepared for short-term changes should they occur.
That is why we were able to win Kurt Seivers, CEO of NXP Semiconductors, as a successor to John Krawczyk. K urt Seivers has outstanding technical expertise, especially in semiconductor matters, microelectronics, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence, and he has a proven track record in the context of rapid transformation processes in companies. If you do not have that type of expertise in a semiconductor company, then you will not be having that company for a long time. That is why I am very glad to have him on the team because he just can contribute some valuable input with his competence and expertise. However, due to the timing and legal convening deadlines, the election of a successor for Mr. Krawczyk could not be placed on the agenda of today's annual general meeting. That is why the Board of Management applied for the judicial appointment of Mr.
Seivers as a member of the Supervisory Board. This was done by the Stuttgart District Court within just a short period of time. This also is me saying thank you to the Stuttgart District Court. That is why this new appointment will take effect starting at the end of today's Annual General Meeting. The Supervisory Board will then propose Mr. Seivers for election at the 2026 Annual General Meeting. This will happen alongside the scheduled election of all the shareholder representatives on the Supervisory Board. With that, and on behalf of the entire Supervisory Board, I would like to warmly welcome Kurt Seivers to the Supervisory Board. I already told you about the 2026 AGM. At the 2026 AGM, we will also vote on the re-election or new election of all shareholder representatives to the Supervisory Board.
We aim to achieve what is known as a staggered board appointment. This means that we do not appoint all the positions at the same time. This is something that is in line with international standards and also the requests put forward by some of the shareholder representatives. This allows also for flexibility at the same time. Ladies and gentlemen, after an eventful 2024, we must now prepare for an equally turbulent 2025. The war against Ukraine is in its fourth year. If you follow daily news, just like this morning, you are not left with a good feeling about the future. It is in its fourth year, just 1,000 km away from Germany. Next, the conflict in the Middle East, another conflict that remains unsolved. The geoeconomic and geostrategic challenges in and around China are also increasing.
The conflict between India and Pakistan has flared up again. The whole world, the whole world is watching the further developments across the Atlantic. The coalition of the willing in Europe leaves us hopeful. In Germany, we are eagerly awaiting if and when the urgently needed reforms will come about. While the world watches these developments with concern, we at Daimler Truck focus on what we can actively influence, providing the best service for satisfied customers, ensuring competitiveness through innovation and productivity, strengthening employee engagement, and as a result of that, creating value for our owners, for you, our shareholders. The Supervisory Board has initiated a new era with a generational change and is convinced that the management of Daimler Truck, with its global team, has the right topics and focus. We have more than 100,000 colleagues directly and indirectly working on that.
The entire team is committed to transforming the commercial vehicle industry and to fully realize the company's financial potential in the medium term. We are also convinced of the fact that Daimler Truck's shareholders are investing in a company and a team characterized by determination and foresight, and that will continue to create attractive value for all stakeholders over the cycle. The Supervisory Board is ready to make its contribution to this. With that, let me say thank you very much for your trust in Daimler Truck and also in the work of the Supervisory Board. Thank you for your attention today. We will now show a short film, and afterwards, I am going to pass the floor to our CEO, Karin Rådström, who will speak to you as CEO of Daimler Truck at today's AGM.
Dear friends of our company, welcome to Daimler Truck.
I've been looking most forward to this day because this is the first AGM as a CEO of Daimler Truck. This role is a great honor for me and, of course, also a great motivation. German is the native language for most of you. For this reason, it is extremely important to me to speak to you in German today. Today's speech is probably the longest one I've ever held in German, and this is also a motivation for me. Over the next few minutes, I would like to give you a short report on what we've resolved to do at Daimler Truck, where we are today, and how we are making progress along the path that is now ahead of us. Most of all, I would like to share my confidence with you.
After all, I am aware of how much we have achieved already at Daimler Truck in recent years, and I'm convinced that we will achieve even more over the next few years. Let's begin with a question of where we want to go as Daimler Truck. In that respect, I have a clear answer for you. Together with my team, I intend to make Daimler Truck the best truck and bus company in the world. This is an ambitious goal, but we have everything it takes to achieve it. I know from my very own experience, it is only when you set yourself ambitious targets that you make the most of your abilities. This is something I've learned not only during my professional career, but also in my time as a competitive top-flight athlete.
Even back then, at that time, I saw that working towards something with perseverance and dedication causes magic to happen. Then you can achieve astonishing things. This is precisely what we have now resolved to do at Daimler Truck. We intend to become the best in class, the best in our industry, for our customers, for our employees, and of course, also for you, our shareholders. Of course, I'm fully aware that it is not an easy time in which we have set ourselves this ambition, this ambitious goal. After all, you can read every day in the news or see on the news that our environment is currently highly volatile. This applies to both geopolitical and geoeconomic trends. From the war in Ukraine through to potential future tariffs and world trade, many questions are open in this respect.
This entails a great degree of uncertainty for business, also for Daimler Truck. In this situation, we are monitoring very carefully the further developments. We're thinking in scenarios, and we flexibly adapt to changes. One example is the transformation to sustainable transportation. Decarbonization has already begun and is also going to continue, but this process is taking place at different speeds. In Europe, the transformation is progressing. As Daimler Truck, we intend to take the lead in this transformation. For this reason, we already have on the market a wide range of electric trucks and buses that we are constantly extending. This means that our emission-free vehicles are ready for takeoff, as it were. For our customers to be able to purchase these vehicles in large numbers, it is also important to have the right framework conditions in place.
For example, a pan-European carbon-based toll system is required to enable our customers to operate emission-free trucks cost-effectively. In addition, an extensive public infrastructure is required so that our customers will also be able to charge their vehicles. To this end, we're holding discussions with political decision-makers, and we are also proactively kickstarting the process ourselves with pilot projects. In the USA, the situation is different. The transformation there is currently slowing down, and we must react to this development and adjust our strategy. We are also able to do so. After all, we are positioned at a global level to achieve a great degree of efficiency with standardized platforms for the drivetrain and vehicle electronics. We deliberately decided not to invest in our own gigafactory for battery cells or even in a lithium mine. Rather, we are building on partnerships and making investments step by step.
This is now providing us with the necessary flexibility. Therefore, we will be able to ramp up our emission-free drivetrains when the market for them is also ready and in place. Our flexible technology strategy is one of the reasons why I am so confident in the future of Daimler Truck. Another reason is our strong starting position. If you have known Daimler Truck for some time already, you will be aware that in recent years, we have distinguished ourselves as being a solid, financially strong, and sound company and that we strive to improve even further. You can also see this from our current results. In the 2024 fiscal year, we achieved an adjusted EBIT of EUR 4.7 billion. In our industrial business, an adjusted return on sales of 8.9% and a free cash flow of EUR 3.2 billion.
This means our profit was slightly down compared to the very good prior year, but our free cash flow has reached a new record high. We'd like to let you, our shareholders, participate in this sound result. After all, we very much appreciate the faith in Daimler Truck you share with us and the confidence you place in our company and our team. We are very grateful for your trust, and such trust should be rewarded. For this reason, we propose at today's annual general meeting to distribute a dividend of EUR 1.90 per share for the past fiscal year. This means that we are maintaining a consistent dividend payment at the level of the prior year, despite the fact that profit has fallen somewhat, as already mentioned. This matters a great deal to us.
We want you, dear shareholders, to participate appropriately in the success of your company, even in volatile times. At the current share price, this corresponds to a very good dividend yield of around 5%. To increase the value of your shares in the company, we furthermore launched a program in August 2023 to repurchase and cancel treasury shares. To date, we've acquired 53.3 million shares. All further details on the current status of the share buyback can be found in the information by the Board of Management on the share Buyback program 2023 This information has been published on the website for our annual general meeting. Now, let's take a quick look at the current fiscal year. All in all, we anticipate a stable business performance in 2025 despite the current uncertainties. During the first quarter of 2025, we got off to a solid start.
In our industrial business, we achieved an adjusted return on sales of 9.6%. For the whole year, we expect an adjusted return on sales of 8% to 10% in our industrial business. With regard to our adjusted group EBIT, we assume that it'll stand at a similar level compared to the prior year and will not deviate more than 5% from that figure. In the current volatile environment, any outlook involves more uncertainty than normal. This is the case with many companies and also with Daimler Truck. There is one thing I can clearly say: Daimler Truck, your company, remains on a very solid trajectory. This shows that we have important strengths that we can rely on each and every day. All around the globe, we have strong brands, strong products, and strong teams. Let me mention only a few examples to illustrate my point.
North America is the most important truck market in the world, and we reached a share of 39.8% in the sector for heavy-duty trucks there in 2024. This made us once more number one. Very clearly so. We have now brought the fifth generation of our successful Cascadia Freightliner, the Cascadia model, that is out on the market with state-of-the-art safety features, even better aerodynamics, and even more driving comfort. In Europe, our range of products has included our battery-electric Mercedes-Benz eActros 600 since the end of 2024. Boasting a range of around 500 km, it is designed for long-distance haulage. Our eActros 600 is very popular with experts. An expert jury voted it International Truck of the Year 2025. Most of all, it is also very popular with our customers. Amazon, for example, has already ordered 202 vehicles.
We have permanently continued to extend our portfolio of city buses. In the meantime, we are able to cover practically all our customers' areas of application, and this is paying off. Since the market launch in 2018, we have already delivered more than 2,500 Mercedes-Benz Citaros. We continue to receive major orders on a regular basis. For instance, we are scheduled to hand over 350 E-Citaros to Hamburger Hochbahn. This means that we as Daimler Truck are really in a strong position, both with our financial figures and with our market presence. We now want to continue building on this foundation. We want to take our company to the next higher level. One focal point in this regard is Mercedes-Benz Trucks. This is an area in which we have already achieved a great deal in recent years, but we still have much more untapped potential.
To further strengthen Mercedes-Benz Trucks, we are taking a range of measures. There are only three examples I'd like to mention in this context. First, at the beginning of January this year, we integrated our businesses in China and India into Mercedes-Benz Trucks. This enables the new segment to make even better use of economies of scale with many parts and components, also at lower-cost locations. Mercedes-Benz Trucks are able to export the BharatBenz trucks manufactured in India to global markets on a larger scale. Our Cost Down Europe efficiency program is a second measure I'd like to mention. We want to cut our annually recurring costs in Europe by more than EUR 1 billion by 2030 at the very latest.
By doing so, we will increase our profitability and resilience and are making sure we have the financial leeway that we need in order to be able to invest into the historical transformation of our industry to the necessary extent. Only a few weeks ago, we have reached agreement with our General Works Council regarding important milestones of our program. We will now start implementation without delay. As a third measure, we will open our global parts center at Halberstadt in Saxony-Anhalt at the beginning of July. This is a new state-of-the-art logistics center with which we will further improve global supplies of replacement parts for Mercedes-Benz Trucks. This project stands for an important strategic alignment. We want to further develop Daimler Truck even more markedly into a company that offers its customers not only great vehicles, but also great end-to-end solutions.
We intend to significantly expand our service business over the next few years. Alongside our global parts center, there are many other initiatives to this end. For example, we want to open further commercial vehicle centers throughout Europe. We are continuing to expand services such as Truck Charge, with which we provide assistance to our customers with topics such as charging infrastructure and thus with the transition to emission-free vehicles. This was only a brief overview of some strategic products that we are currently addressing. In a few weeks' time, we will present our overall updated corporate strategy in detail at our Capital Market Day on the 8th of July. Our Capital Market Day will take place in Charlotte in North Carolina, and I would like to warmly invite you to follow the event on our live stream.
Dear shareholders, dear friends of Daimler Truck, I am coming to the end of my speech and back to the beginning again. To be CEO of Daimler Truck is a very great honor and a great motivation for me. After all, our products are extremely important for our economy and our society. We work for all who keep the world moving. Daimler Truck is a great company that is already strong today and is able to be much stronger tomorrow. Going forward, we intend to make full use of everything that distinguishes Daimler Truck already for our customers, for our employees, and of course, also for our shareholders. We want to make Daimler Truck the best truck and bus company in the world. I do not see any reason why we should not succeed in this. On the opposite, I see very many reasons that we will indeed succeed.
After all, we have fantastic brands. We have fantastic products and solutions. Most of all, we also have a fantastic global team that works with persistence and dedication towards a shared goal. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Karin, for your speech. Ladies and gentlemen, we have now reached the end of the publicly broadcast part of this virtual AGM. The live stream will now be available only to shareholders listed in the share register, to their proxies, invited guests, and accredited media representatives. I would therefore like to take this opportunity to bid farewell to all other viewers and thank you very much for your interest.