Good morning, everyone. This is Thomas Hofmann speaking. Thank you for taking your time, and welcome to this conference call on our third-quarter results of 2025. Here in this call, I'm welcoming Eva Scherer, CFO of Daimler Truck. Before we start with this media Q&A session, as usual, the following notes. This call is conducted in English, so please be so kind to ask your questions in English as well. The operator will now explain the procedure for registering your questions.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press Star and one on your telephone keypad. Please press Star and two on your telephone keypad if you wish to withdraw your question. One moment, please. We are registering your questions.
Thank you. We will now begin the Q&A session. I will address the questioners by name, but please be so kind to also introduce yourself and state your media outlet. Take your time for your questions, and please ask them slowly and clearly. We are already having the first question, Markus Clausen. Please go ahead.
Hello, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. My name is Markus Clausen from Dow Jones. I have two, if I may. The first one is on the planned share buyback. Could you give us a rough estimate when they will start, in the first or possibly the second half of next year? The second question is about the margin forecast for this year. Is it fair to assume that the return will be a little bit more on the lower end of the range given the weak performance in North America? I believe you already mentioned this in the analyst call, but the connection was not optimal. Thanks.
Thank you, Markus, for your question. Yes, I can confirm the second part with the margin outlook for this year. It will be more towards the lower end of the range. That is correct. The first one on the share buyback. I can't give you a timing yet, but as I said on the analyst call also, we are currently finalizing our budget planning for next year. We are working on understanding all the stipulations within the new 232 regulation. Once we have clarity on that, that's when we can give an update on the share buyback. That is why we haven't started yet, because we don't have that clarity yet.
Perfect. Many thanks.
Next one in the line is Benjamin Wagner, FHZ.
Hello. Good morning. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Benjamin Wagner, FHZ in Frankfurt. Frau Scherer, can you give us an update on the Cost Down Europe savings program? With the special question, how many of the 5,000 jobs you want to cut have already been cut? How many of your employees have already moved to the so-called orientation platform?
Thank you for your question. What I can say is we are on track with our timeline for the Cost Down Europe program, and we are working through the action step by step. We are to achieve a low triple-digit million saving amount there next year, as we have also indicated during our capital market day. On details about headcounts, we do not comment.
Next one in the line is Ilona Wissenbach.
Yes, good morning. I have a question about the EU CO2 regulation. The truck makers asked the EU for less stringent CO2 rules. Daimler was warning about draconian penalties coming up otherwise, noting that those foreseen now are 10 times higher than those for cars. I would be interested, what is draconian? Have you assessed in how far you reached the targets and how high the fine would be you still have to face? Environmentalist groups are concerned that if this is watered down, the OEM may be less ambitious to offer e-trucks, and perhaps it would also have a dampening effect on demand.
Thank you for your question, Ilona. First of all, based on our planning, we can achieve the targets in 2030 because we have the portfolio that enables us to transition to zero emission. This is clearly demonstrated by our market share. As I said during my speech today, we have more than 50% market share in electric heavy-duty trucks in quarter three. We are the market leader here in Europe. This shows we have done our homework. We have spent a lot of money in R&D in order to develop the products needed in order to achieve the CO2 targets. What we cannot influence is the availability of infrastructure. That is where we are really asking for support, because we need to ensure that our customers can drive the trucks where they need to go based on their route planning.
We need to make sure that then for them the total cost of ownership works. That is something where there is some work to do, and we do not see the ramp-up in infrastructure progressing as fast as we need it. What we are warning is really a link of infrastructure availability with the penalties, because otherwise you are penalizing the OEMs without enabling our customers to run the trucks. With draconian penalties, I mean, you mentioned it, if you talk about 10x the passenger car penalties, of course, these are huge amounts. This is why we do believe now is the time, because we still have a couple of years to go until 2030 to really make sure that we put everything in place, but that it is also clear that ultimately when the infrastructure is not there, we should not be.
Held accountable if we have done our homework as an industry and have invested billions of euros into our electric truck portfolio.
Thank you. Perhaps if I may, can you a bit elaborate more on the Nexperia chip situation? You said during the analyst call the production is not affected and you manage it quite well yet. Yeah, how is the situation? I think you are also depending on tier one suppliers, and. Or do you not need that many of those standard Nexperia chips?
Yeah, I mean, we need the Nexperia chips as everybody in the industry, I think. In trucking, we need less than in the passenger car sector. Of course, also for us, it is a big topic. Our production is currently not affected. Of course, we are working on mitigations. We have secured broker buys, and we do hope that we will get through the next couple of weeks until hopefully also there will be, that the situation could potentially be resolved. We are doing what we can as everybody is. Production is running right now and secured. It is really a situation where week by week you are working on getting the parts, of course also working very closely with our suppliers.
We're also doing broker buys ourselves to provide our suppliers with the chips, because it's just whatever you can get your hands on right now, that's what you do. We have learned a lot during the last supply chain crisis, and we do have good access when it comes to the supply chain. Everybody is supporting and everybody is cooperating closely to avoid an impact. We do not have obviously full visibility. It's a week-by-week thing.
Thank you.
We have now Alexander Jungert on the line. Mannheimer Morgen, please go ahead.
Yes, hi and good morning. This is Alexander Jungert, Mannheimer Morgen. Just one short question. You were talking about the weak business in the U.S. Are there any effects on sites here like Mannheim or Wörth? Thank you.
Thank you for your question. Alexander, I mean, we do have some component supplies from our German powertrain sites into the U.S.. I mean, of course, a low market overall is impacting also our German powertrain plans. I mean, this is all already considered in the production programs that we have now set up for the quarter four.
Thanks.
As a reminder once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press Star followed by one.
It looks like there are no more questions. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we have already reached the end of today's conference call. Thank you for participating. The recording of the session will be available later today on our Daimler Truck website. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact the Daimler Truck Communications team. We wish you all a good day. Good.