Welcome to the global conference call of Mercedes-Benz. At our customers' 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 Mercedes-Benz website. The short introduction will be directly followed by a Q& A session. If you have difficulty during the conference, please press zero and the hash key on your telephone keypad for operator assistance. If you want to ask a question after the presentation, please press nine star on your telephone keypad and you will hear the following. Thank you for your participation. Your request to speak is registered. When it's your turn to raise a question, you will hear the message. You are now in talk mode. To withdraw your question, please dial 3 and the star key after which you will hear the message.
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Good morning from Stuttgart. This is Christina Schenk speaking on behalf of Mercedes-Benz. I would like to welcome you on both the telephone and the Internet to our Q2 results conference call. I'm very happy to have with me today Ola Källenius, our CEO, and Harald Wilhelm, our CFO. To give you more time for your questions, Ola will provide a brief introduction followed by Harald who will detail our financials. After that we will move directly into the Q& A session. The respective presentation can be found on the Mercedes-Benz IR website. With that I would like to hand o ver to you, Ola.
Thank you, Christina, and good morning everybody. In a very dynamic business environment, you can see in our Q2 results that we have produced solid financial performance in line with what we had expected. Of course, the financial performance is affected by the tariffs. We are going to get into more details on that in this call, and Harald will drill down on it. Next to what is happening in the world, in the markets, we have also been very busy and very focused on delivering our biggest product offensive and technology offensive in the history of the company. This is a journey that we have been on now for the several past years, and it is coming to fruition. The first calling card of this product offensive is the CLA. It is now being delivered to customers.
The response that we have received from customers, from dealers, and industry watchers around the world has been extremely positive, and we feel encouraged by this. This is like an appetizer of an eight-course meal where in the next three years we are going to launch more than 25 individual models, and it is happening rapidly. We have presented the new CLA Shooting Brake, which is very important especially for the European market. Also, for business customers in the European market, it has been traditionally a popular model. At the IAA, the International Auto Show in Munich in September, only a few weeks from now, we will show you the first vehicle of our so-called Mercedes-Benz Electric Architecture, which ushers in a whole new era in electric mobility for Mercedes-Benz. We are very, very excited about it. It is not just about our main brand Mercedes-Benz.
Our friends in Affalterbach have shown a concept car which is nothing less than spectacular. Many of you maybe ask yourself, my goodness, what is this? This performance vehicle seems unreal. Is it really real? I can tell you this, you will probably be surprised when we launch the series version of this next year, how real it is. Watch this space. At the same time, our van division is also going through a historic product and investment offensive, really where we are going to replace the complete lineup of our vans in the next two to three years. That is also around the corner. They are equally busy compared to the passenger car people on the customer side. I could go on for the rest of the day talking about what we are doing there, both on the physical touch points and also in the digital world.
I just wanted to highlight two things. We have now started the sale of the owned retail in Germany. The first few transactions are in the pipeline here and the interest has been tremendous, which we also view as a positive sign. We opened at the very top of our portfolio the first Mercedes-Maybach brand center in Seoul. Should you be traveling in Korea, I highly recommend that you stop by. It is an unbelievable celebration for that product, for those products and that brand. Last but not least, in terms of key messages here on page two, as you know, we have been focused over the last few years on cash flow generation. Again, Harald will go into detail, but we produced another solid quarter in terms of cash flow.
If we turn to page three, I do not want to go into too much detail on the earnings, I just want to highlight two things. The free cash flow, as I just mentioned, but also in terms of the EBIT, you can see that there are two numbers there. That is because of restructuring. You know that we announced at the beginning of the year that we would start restructuring, especially here in Germany, especially on the indirect staff side. That is progressing according to plan and that is why we have made some provisions for that. Moving to the next page, page four. Dissecting the sales. Yes, the market environment is challenging, especially in China, but also through the whole tariff discussion there was management of how to deal with wholesale in the United States that we tried to do to the best of our ability and I am sure that will continue into the next quarter which affects the wholesale figure. In spite of the fact that the retail sales were quite strong in the U.S. in that quarter, in terms of top end we stayed at a healthy 14% as a percentage of the total sales.
On the XEVs we had slight growth. You can see that the plug-in hybrids are very successful here and we are managing our battery electric vehicle sales in the current environment. We are watching especially in the European environment now with the 2025 regulation in place that many market participants are trying to, above and beyond the natural demand, push volumes up.
We are managing this in my view in a more careful way to also protect the integrity of the brand, not just on the ICE side but also on the BEV side. As I mentioned here at the beginning, we are just on the verge of a massive product launch here in the next two to three years on the electric side. We will see our electric BEV-only sales once that product offensive comes to fruition, growing, and especially important will be the vehicles in the core segment like the new electric GLC and the C-Class that we're launching next year and will have the full first year in the market in 2027 on a broad range of products. Here, intelligent management growth of XEV. With that, I switch to vans on page five. The van market was also affected by the current economic environment.
In that economic environment, you will see that as we go into the van figures, if you follow the van segment as such, everybody is challenged, but I would say we're probably the best student in the class here. Not everybody discloses their financials in this case, but for the ones that do, you can see that they are significantly, significantly more challenged than us. That is not the call to be complacent and certainly not arrogant. What I want to do is to say kudos to the van team for managing this in a difficult circumstance, and that kudos actually goes to the whole Mercedes-Benz team. I've seldom been in a more dynamic environment in the auto industry than we're expecting now.
Everywhere I go in the company, I meet focused people, motivated people, people with a can-do attitude that are looking forward to everything that we have in the pipeline, take the challenges, and in an agile way try to manage them. On the BEV side, to go back to electric vans, yes, we are growing, but it's also true that the BEV ratio of light commercial vehicles compared to what maybe regulators and many people thought five years ago is on a different level. Yes, we're super happy that we just signed probably the largest single order of e- vans with Amazon here recently with 5,000 units. It's a sign that our electric vans are very attractive and next generation in the making, as I mentioned.
As part of the discussion that is happening in the industry with the EU, and in this year, I also have the role of being the speaker of ACEA, the European manufacturers association, and you might have read the opinion piece that I put in The Economist only a couple of weeks ago that now is the time to actually have a reality check here and have an honest and forward-looking conversation about how we in the European auto industry through regulation create a better path towards decarbonization. We're open for that conversation, looking forward to it. With that I would like to hand over to Harald who's going to take us through the financials please.
Thanks Ola and hello everybody. Let's go back to the financial of cars on page six. Ola, you took us already through the sales, so we explained that. On the revenue side and the ASP side we see the competitive market environment and obviously we go a bit deeper when we now look on page seven on the EBIT and thereafter on the cash evolution. Page seven, EBIT evolution for cars. Let's have a look on the underlying business performance. If you adjust quarter two for the tariffs you are at 6.6% return on sales adjusted in the second quarter. That means a mid EUR 3 digit million tariff impact in Q2. Including the tariffs, the return on sales adjusted is at 5.1%. Let me take you through the key effects in that quarter. First in volume structure, net pricing, we see lower contributions overall from the China business.
Then we see also the effect from the lower unit sales, some softer net pricing, lower used car business, and costs related to CO2 compliance. Last but not least, as just mentioned before, the tariff impact. A part of the FX effect you see here on the chart is linked to Turkish Lira for which we have pricing compensation. The remainder is mainly Chinese Yuan and Korean Won. If you look on the remainder on the chart on the right hand side, moving to the right hand side, you can see our efficiency program at work in all categories: in material cost, in operations and selling expenses, in R&D.
We call that program NLP, Next Level Performance, and if you add up the numbers it shows you an EUR 800 million contribution or improvement in that quarter, which equals roughly 300 basis points improvement in terms of ROS in the quarter. You see I think we're trying to do our homework. On page eight, looking on cash evolution, we see EBIT adjusted at EUR 1.4 billion. What are the moving parts? Light headwind from working capital by a bit higher inventories, some favorable contribution from trade receivables driven by lower volumes and PBAC, however offset by lower trade payables due to lower production output.
At the same time, the net investments are only slightly above the depreciation level and in the other buckets you find the divi of PBAC and the reversal of the equity result and as well the NLP personnel cost measures which have not yet been cashed out. Page nine, over to the vans, same thing, sales explained already. Let's jump right away I would say to the EBIT and cash explanation, page 10. Quarter two, a healthy return on sales of 10.4% that includes a small impact, I mean, from the tariffs but probably not worthwhile to mention here. What are the key changes compared to the quarter a year ago in the volume structure pricing bucket? Lower volume, partially offset by an improved mix and some softer net pricing and a higher leasing share, as well as a bit of a lower after sales business contribution. FX, same thing.
As I commented before on cars, the industrial performance continues to support, driven by lower product related expenses despite higher cost for CO2 credits, and in the other bucket we see mainly the absence of prior year impacts. On the cash side, see EBIT adjusted 227, net working capital, a bit of a headwind by inventory. The financial investments, the net financial investments reflect the sale of our business operations in Argentina, and on the net investments in PPE and intangibles, we see that they clearly exceed the depreciation. That's in line with the guidance as we continue to ramp up our van architecture. On the others, we also see positive cash effect from leasing and FPAC DV on the mobility.
The new business is driven obviously by the development of the sales volume on the industrial side and the situation in China, partially offset by higher average financing and leasing volume per contract. The change in the portfolio is mainly driven by FX effects. On the EBIT side for mobility, we see EBIT adjusted at EUR 290 million or return on equity adjusted at 8.9%. A bit higher cost of credit risk due to a softer global economic outlook. An improved portfolio margin, however, offset by a lower volume in Q2, and then as well here you see on the right hand side of the chart improved cost position for SG&A supported by our efficiency measures. In the other bucket, you also see contribution from our financial investments in quarter two.
Without the expenses for the ramp up of the charging business, the MBM return on equity adjusted would sit at a double digit 10% return on sales. Looking at the group EBIT, page 14, cars, vans, mobility, we explained the recon is negative mainly due to a lower AD equity result of Daimler Truck. EBIT adjusted at EUR 2 billion. What are the adjustments? Mainly the one timer related to the restructuring charges from our NLP program, which reflects, I think, good progress we made so far. We had a good start.
If you bear in mind that actually we got started with it in June and that means we fear in the quarter two as you see on the chart, EUR 560 million which got recorded for the people who signed up already and as we speak we gain further traction on that program which will yield further efficiencies in the future to come. On top we see the adjustments for the M&A transaction related to the sale of our business operations in Argentina. Thereby the group EBIT reported sits at EUR 1.3 billion. On the cash flow side, page 15, we see the income taxes, the cash income taxes paid at - EUR 350 million, t he Recon related to the Daimler Truck divi which we cashed in in the second quarter and that leaves us with a solid cash flow on the industrial side of EUR 1.9 billion.
Looking on the liquidity side, page 16, the free cash flow we explained already before, the divi has been paid out with a EUR 4.30 in May which is EUR 4.1 billion and it means we generated in terms of free cash flow EUR 4.2 billion which fully covered the divi paid so far and that leaves us with a very comfortable EUR 30 billion net cash position. Now let's turn to the outlook section, page 18. As always, please consider the assumptions carefully on the chart. Let's start with the cars sales guidance. With 900,000 year to date units, we now see 2025 significantly below 2024, mainly due to China.
We expect H2 sales in the vicinity of H1 with quarter three slightly lower and quarter four slightly higher. If we look on the regions, in the U.S. we see a stable underlying customer demand. Looking at the retail side of things, with H2 approximately same level as H1 in the group sales for the U.S. for the full year we expect them to be slightly lower than the retails and the previous year. As we manage stock levels to target, any potential impact of U.S. trade policies on consumer sentiment needs to be seen. In Europe we continue to see robust sales performance and we expect that also for the remainder of the year. With a healthy customer order intake and a solid backlog taking us into quarter four. In China, the macro side remains subdued and the competitive environment continues.
We also see banks withdrawing high commission offers from the market, supporting pricing, however affecting volumes. So far, the global TEF share for the full year we expect that to be between 14%-15% which means basically in H2 same level as in H1 and on the EV share year to date we are at 20ish, so we continue to see that in the full year between 20%-22%. On the return on sales side, return on sales adjusted for cars in H1 we achieved a solid 6.2% including tariffs. If you take out the tariffs, that leaves you with an underlying margin of 7% in H1. How do we see H2 compared to H1 volume? Basically flattish. We see the current commercial dynamics to continue for the remainder of the year.
We see some headwinds from material cost phasing due to one timers in H2 and the more technical impact from fixed cost capitalization as we will reduce inventory towards the year end. For the full year we expect the underlying margin within the initial guidance range of 6%-8% pre-tariff within the lower half of the band. Now, even with lower full year sales on the tariffs, we assume today's tariffs to stay for the remainder of the year. We consider the EU-U.S. trade deal of Sunday. What does it mean? We still see the largest impact from deliveries from the EU to the U.S. Mainly that affects new vehicle business and after sales. Second to that is now Mexico to U.S. with parts still playing the biggest role here.
Third is U.S to China, mainly new vehicles, especially GLE and GLS, and then the remainder of the world in terms of deliveries into the U.S. as well. We take into account the relief from imports from the U.S. to Europe. If we take that all together, we now see the full year tariff impact at around 150 basis points for the full year compared to the 300 we set in quarter one. However, uncertainty remains with regard to the effective date and the transitioning. This brings us to a new full year guidance range of 4%-6% including tariffs. Considering the tariff phasing, please note that the full year impact arises from only three out of four quarters with the respective impact on the run rate. Cash conversion rate is now expected to be between 0.8-1 including tariffs. No change on PPE and R&D.
On the van side, sales as usual, there is a stronger H2 compared to H1. However, due to a lower H1, we now see full year sales significantly below previous year level. XEV unchanged. On the return on sales adjusted in H1, vans achieved a healthy 11% return on sales adjusted, well within the guidance range, and I think as you pointed out, Ola, before, mean outperforming competition. This included a small impact from tariffs in Q2. For H2 compared to H1, we see the following impacts: headwinds from seasonality of cost and the ramp up of new factories in the context of the VAN architecture. For the full year, based on the new volume guidance, we do see the underlying performance 150 basis points lower.
Assuming tariffs to stay where they are today for the remainder of the year and based on the recent Euro, U.S., EU-U.S. trade deal, we expect an additional full year impact of approximately 50 basis points. This leads us to a new guidance range of 8%-10% for the full year including tariffs. CCR unchanged, also including tariff impact, no change to PPE and R&D. On the mobility side, we come from 8.8% return on sales adjusted in H1. We expect the full year unchanged guidance unchanged in the range of 8%-9% driven by a continuous positive impact from the portfolio margin in the second half of the year and a slightly higher cost of credit risk on the group guidance that follows obviously same assumptions as on the segment side. Following the adjustments of the divisional guidance we now see the revenue significantly below previous year due to the sales development. We continue to see the group EBITDA and free cash flow significantly below previous year now including tariffs.
Please consider the one off charges from M& A and the efficiency program with more to come in H2 as an adjustment between the EBIT adjusted and the EBIT reported for the full year. Looking at the investments, 2025 will only be slightly above 2024 and will be the peak before we start to come down in 2026. However, the phasing of the investments is back end loaded in H2 versus H1 in 2025. Taking that into account and the margin outlook including the tariff impact in H2, cash generation in H2 will be impacted accordingly. This will leave us with most of the cash generation achieved in H1 for the full year. What does that mean with regard to capital allocation? We just got more visibility on 2025. The Divi paid in May is now fully covered by the free cash flow generated year to date.
We stick to our capital allocation framework which stipulates that cash flow earned will be paid back to our shareholders and that means the cash to come from operations or M& A will be subject to that capital allocation framework. With regard to the Daimler Truck stake in Q1, we said that a partial stake sale is strategically on the agenda. Daimler Truck successfully held their capital markets day which was positively perceived by the capital market community. This reinforces our strategic perspective and approach on that topic. With this I hand back to Ola.
Thank you, Harald. I would like to end this presentation by extending an invitation to come and visit us at the International Auto Show in Munich in September. On Sunday, September 7th, we will have the world premiere of the first vehicle of our so-called MB.EA, Mercedes-Benz Electric Architecture, that is the carrier of several new and important models in the core segment. From a modular point of view, this architecture is intelligently and fully flexibly integrated. Also, on the modular side with the MMA architecture, we can, for this completely brand new electric drivetrain that we have developed, use not only appropriate drivetrain components but also, more importantly, completely flexibly the different battery technologies that we have developed, from state-of-the-art high energy density NMC to more cost-optimized LFP technology.
I think this is what's so unique with these architectures, that they all fit in the same envelope and you have full flexibility between them, which is, I think, almost unique for any car company. I cannot overstate how important it is that it's also the new era of MB.OS, Mercedes-Benz Operating System. This doesn't only change the product, it changes the whole value chain in and around the product—how you produce the product, how you service the product, how you take care of the product in the market. This is more than a new chapter, this is a new world for us. Here, we're already in series production, so we are delivering these vehicles to customers today. Needless to say, with the MB.EA and the first model on that new software architecture, software hardware architecture on the GLC, we will up our game again. Watch this space.
You can look at MB.OS, it's like a river that flows and never ends and you can now add water to it. This now being fully over-the-air, reachable and in production now. I don't know if I'm aware of a legacy maker, a legacy carmaker that actually has one of these in production now. Many are announced. We are in production now and very rapidly we will proliferate this through our complete product portfolio. Not just the fantastic new electric cars that are in the pipeline, but this will find its way over to the I side as well. This will be busy times, hard work for our R&D team and production, of course, marketing and sales and the other support functions. The ball has been kicked and the game is on now. In rapid succession you will see these products enter the market.
I think it's the most exciting time coming up for Mercedes here in the next two to three years in an environment that is also exciting, not for the right reasons in this case, but we will stay agile and we will adapt to that environment as well to make sure that Mercedes stays the course. Thank you very much and looking forward to your questions.
Thank you very much, Ola and Harald, for the exciting outlook on what's to come. We will now move into the Q and A section of the call and I will identify you by name. Please make sure to introduce yourself with your name and the name of the organization that you're representing before you ask your questions. Just a few practical points. As usual, please ask your question in English. Also, as a matter of fairness, please limit the number of questions to a maximum of two. Before we start, the operator will explain the procedure.
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We start the Q& A and the first question goes to José Asumendi from JP Morgan.
Thank you very much and good morning Schenck Christina. Harald, g ood morning. A couple of questions maybe. Harald, can you talk a little bit about the impact of tariffs that you already outlined on the guidance, but a little bit more in the direction of which mitigation measures can you take in the course of 2025 and 2026 when it comes to price increases, further localization of products or any other measures you're building into the guidance? Second question, Ola, can you talk please about how Mercedes-Benz is positioned on level four, level five autonomous driving? Who are your key partners? Where do you test the vehicles and how do you strategically position Mercedes-Benz on the Robotaxi race to be able to offer that on also that premium package when it comes to safety? Thank you.
On the tariff side, I mean the guidance which we give here on 150 basis points is the direct tariff impact as over time I think it will be difficult to differentiate any volume or pricing and therefore net margin impact. I think that is the visibility we want to give you here. 150 basis points, as I said, you could almost say half of that, I mean is the lag Europe, I mean to the U.S. and the remainder being spread. Rest assured that obviously we'll try to do each and every effort. I mean on the commercial side, however, not commenting on the commercial policy and strategy here to mitigate and also as we announced, pursuing further localization efforts as we commented already in the Q1. We're looking at, I mean everything in this respect, but nothing new to report on top of what we announced already.
José, good morning. With regard to autonomous drive, you could say that in the last four years as one piece of MB.OS, we have completely rewired the whole foundation of our ADAS strategy to introduce already now in the market with the CLA, an absolute state of the art benchmark compute, power sensing set and software stack. If you look at how you extrapolate that into the next two to three to four years, we are primarily focused on the individual personal use s egment.
We think that level three that we were the first OEM to introduce onto the highway here in Germany and also in a couple of states in the United States, we have kind of planted that first flag on the moon. Now to look at what is happening on the regulatory side. How far in the next three years or so can we take level three highway and then potentially into urban level four on an individual use case starts with parking, where we had already the first product in the market actually a couple of years ago to just experiment with it. When GenAI entered into the frame and you can kind of rethink how you do the software stack, you can go to a complete end-to-end foundation model on top of the, let's say, two boxes that you have had up until now.
One for perception, sensor fusion, another box for planning and control. Now that you can complement this with GenAI and create a really holistic end-to-end foundation model, the game changes, but one thing does not change and it is the ability to prove the safety case. I think this is where our approach with our strategic partners, both in the West but also in China, we will introduce it in a responsible way. We have every single tool in our toolbox now to go anywhere. Should level four, level five find its way into individual use cases in the foreseeable future, we can and will be in that game.
I do see in the immediate future, and that is what we are launching now, super sophisticated level 2 systems and there are lots of shades of gray here obviously, but kind of point-to-point navigation feels like fully autonomous, but you are still responsible. Then a growth of the level three envelope and level four parking and then we will see where the journey goes. What we are not planning to do is to become a large-scale mobility provider competing with local transportation or taxis. We have no immediate plans for that at the moment. Thank you.
Thank you very much. José and I would hand over the next question to Patrick Hummel from UBS.
Thanks. Good morning everybody. I would have two questions for Harald if that's okay. First one, Harald, basically that sounds like you will resume the share buybacks in very due course because you covered the dividend, as you pointed out, with the H1 free cash flow. You haven't precisely guided the free cash flow. I hear you loud and clear. H2 is going to have a lower free cash flow. I think you also probably did a bit better in H1 already than you had expected. I am just trying to guesstimate what the share buyback volume for the remainder o f the year could be i s a range of EUR 1 billion-EUR 2 billion realistic for the last five months of the year?
My second question is regarding the margin guide in cars. You know, you kept the 200 basis points range 4%6%, b ut now we do have more or less clarity on the tariff outcome. I'm just wondering under which circumstances we w ould even see the low end of that range of 4% because applying your logic, it sounds like we should end up at least at 5%. Is that 4% for whatever may get w orse in China, is it for a non-timely implementation of the tariff deal? What needs to happen to see the 4% as an outcome? Thank you.
Yeah, thanks Patrick. With pleasure. Take the two. I mean, number one, yeah, I think cash generation demonstrated to be pretty strong in H2, definitely will. We'll take it with that spirit, I mean, into H2 a t the same time, I think I e xplained before that investment profile is more backloaded and at the same time with the margin outlook and the tariff impact impacting H2 that means cash generation means that will definitely run at a lower end in H2. I also commented that quarter three sales will be lower than the quarter four sales mean to come, which also impacts the cash phasing in the remainder of H2.
Therefore, I think you hear a bit of a more cautious approach in terms of the cash generation on the operational side for the remainder of the year. At the same time I think I also commented that any M&A proceeds, whatever they're coming from, are also subject to the SBB framework, capital allocation framework. In a nutshell, cash generated in H2, wherever it comes from, clearly we will consider.
The profiling I think rather suggests that this is more back end loaded mean towards the year rather than short term. Point number two on the margin side. I commented 7% underlying in H1, a bit of a headwind in H2 underlying as commented before on cost phasing. I think that suggests a number which is a bit lower than the 7%. Right. If you add up the two numbers and you divide them by two, it gives you, I think you end up, I mean with a comment on the guidance range in terms of sitting in the lower half of the band and then you take the 150 basis points off and here you go.
At the same time we need to say we do not have details at this stage in terms of, I mean the transitioning to the new regime, the one which has been agreed on Sunday. Details yet to come out on that I would say. That is why I think at this point in time it is sensible to have a broader guidance range in terms of the four to six and rather having a too narrow one that is t he back of it.
Got it. Thanks, Harald.
Thank you, Patrick. I would give the next question to Tim Rokossa from Deutsche Bank.
Thank you very much, Christina. Hey Ola and Harald. Ola, to you. Probably first, now that the EU deal is hopefully done, can we expect another more caste-specific deal to follow on top of the one with the EU? You sounded pretty optimistic on this in the past, so w e know that you were very engaged. With the discussions with the Trump administration. Will this include some form of export or investment credits, for example, in your view?
Secondly, Harald, I'm sorry I have t o follow up on this again y ou are responsible for making this a very integral part of the Mercedes story, t he buyback program. What's really preventing you from launching it now? I mean, you clearly, you are always o f the view that your stock is undervalued c ertainly right now you have generated enough free cash flow. Why don't you just start buying back the stock? In that context, how should we think about the truck stake as well? Which has done pretty well. Thank you.
Good morning. We have been extensively engaged in the conversation that has been going on between the United States and the EU as a thought partner to the political decision makers. In the final hour, as you could see on Sunday, the two parties decided for a broad-based, relatively clear and simple deal. The 15% in the one direction and as far as cars is concerned, 0% in the other direction. Some areas were left out where I think there is discussion to be had. If you read what the different parties say, steel, pharmaceuticals, maybe stuff on the digital side.
For all intents and purposes, that global deal for now is it, if it is possible to complement that with additional, I do not know, sector-specific or even company-specific amendments, I would say at this point that is very uncertain. It is not something, if it is possible, certainly we would try, but it is not something that I would at this stage calculate with in our plan going forward.
Tim, the capital allocation framework, I mean, very happy to hear that. I mean it's that much appreciated by the community. You heard clearly before that we are committed to it. I think I commented on the cash generation, the free cash generation from the operational side of things in H2. I don't need to repeat that. So far the cash generated this year pays the divi which has been wired in May, right? Basically that part is achieved, accomplished and that means any cash yet to be generated in second half of the year. We will look at that for SPB activity. You heard that H2 cash generation is definitely lower. Any M& A would be part of the envelope of the policy of the framework.
I think consciously we reminded, we repeated our statement on the Daimler Truck stake in terms of strategic agenda but also in terms of DT progressing with the CMD and any proceeds which we would accomplish from M and A or by DT stake definitely would support cash generation and then we'll have a look at that. Maybe this is a bit more backloaded in the year than right now.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you, Tim. I would move on to Tom Narayan from RBC. Tom, over to you.
Yes, thank you for taking the question. The first one for Harald on the tariffs. I appreciate the commentary there. The triple digit million so far, 150 basis points for the full year. Some other OEMs have disclosed a little more specific amounts or at least some quarterly cadence. Just wondering if you can help us dimensionalize the tariff impact on a quarterly cadence basis. Does this increase per quarter in the back half? It obviously incorporates the trade deal. Just hoping for a little more color on how we should think about it on a quarterly basis. The second one is a follow up to José's question. You know there's a lot of news on Tesla being trying to get approval, regulatory approval in Europe with unsupervised FSD camera only. I mean we'll see if it happens.
You know the rest of the industry is embracing multi sensor, lidar, radar, et cetera. In the event Tesla is able to g et regulatory approval in Europe, would you consider exploring a similar camera only approach or is it kind of a different customer demo and lidar camera prices coming down? Thanks.
Hey, Tom on the terrace. I think I said on quarter two that's a mid three digit number. Look on the chart, you find the detailed impact even if you calculate 6.6% underlying in the second quarter compared to the 5.1 including tariffs. So that's 1.5% sitting there in the second quarter. If you take that amount that will be roughly same order of magnitude in quarter three and then it will be a higher number in quarter four still being in the mid three digit, but higher mid three digit than quarter two and quarter three. I hope that clarifies.
Yes. With regard to ADAS, let's take a look at what we have now and what we believe is necessary for what you're describing. To do level 2, which is super sophisticated and it kind of feels like a Level 4 system in most cases, except for when it's not. This is the whole point of ADAS going towards Level 4, the tail end of the corner cases is a very, very, very long tail end. To do a robust Level 2 system in our humble opinion, and we're launching it now with the CLA, requires 27 sensors. That is a mix between cameras of course, that's the main road, radars, and ultrasonic sensors. If you want to go beyond Level 2 and you want to go to Level 3.
And certainly if you want to go to Level 3, urban and the journey to Level 4, I know it's a little bit shades of gray and you could have a long conversation about what is what. We believe you need additional sensor redundancy. That is where the LIDAR would come into the picture as we have it today on the S-Class and the EQS for RL3 highway system. Because there can be circumstances where for a split second a camera can be blinded. In that split second, no matter how unlikely it is, something comes in the way of the vehicle. We do not believe that it would be sensible for Mercedes-Benz to, when you pursue those higher levels, to not use the sensor redundancy. That is our firm belief. With regard to the European regulator that we have been working with for.
I don't know if there was a European regulator in 1886 for horses, but if there was one, I'm sure we worked with him when we did the first car. We have been working for decades with the European regulator to try to convince them that the incredibly sophisticated technology that we have that we deem as safe when used appropriately can also be deployed in Europe. As we sit here today, we're not even allowed to deploy Level 2. If the EU regulator changes their mind, and we will encourage them in a safe manner to allow these technologies as they're allowed in China, for instance, then we will certainly be there.
If you want to dig deeper into what it takes to weed out the corner cases of Level 4, I would suggest you have a longer conversation also with a company that is active with a robotaxi service in California. Speak to them.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Tom. My next question goes to Stephen Reitman from Bernstein . Stephen, can you unmute yourself? We cannot hear you yet.
Hello? Can you hear me now?
Perfect.
Okay, sorry. Can you hear me now?
Yes, we can, Stephen.
Okay, sorry. Okay. Excuse me. Sorry. Thank you. Yes, on the U.S. please, two questions. First of all, now we have some more visibility, much better visibility on the level of tariffs. Could you now maybe just think about your thought process about mitigation, particularly in terms of pricing. Now I think obviously we understand how all the manufacturers were reluctant to provoke the administration with price increases. Before there was some better visibility, but n ow we actually have this.
What are your thought press on that? Secondly, with the seems to be very progressive dismantling of emissions regulations in the U.S., what does that implication h ave for your strategy i n the U.S. space in terms of maybe pushing more of your ICE vehicles in your overall mix. How do you see that? Thank you very much.
Yeah, Stephen, as commented before, I think we outlined the direct tariff impact as we see it based on the most recent events and commented more in detail in the questions thereafter. Again, in terms of commercial policy, we're not commenting that definitely. We'll see where we have elasticities we can make use of in the market, in which areas, in which products, and obviously at the same time we need to see the demand side of things and how the consumer community is going to respond to the new situation and the setup and what competitors are doing in this respect. Therefore, rest assured Minh was put on that but no further commentary. I think Minh, at this point globally we see the U.S. in a healthy state in terms of underlying demand as commented before.
On the retail side, we see definitely further opportunities, moving forward with a great product lineup to come into the U.S. Clearly, we see the U.S. as a growth opportunity and want to capture that moving forward. We will be competitive on the product side, on the commercial side of things, at the same time pursuing globally the localization as we announced during the Q1.
Hi, Steven, your questions around emissions. The way we read the so-called Big Beautiful Bill is whereas they have not yet to our knowledge presented the exact new CAFE standard going forward, the text of the Big Beautiful Bill in our interpretation says that should you not meet that standard, that is yet to be determined, your penalty is zero. Which means the whole credit and that whole system that we have been seeing for years or decades, I do not know how long we have been in that, kind of disappears. What would be our approach to the market? Our approach to the market is, and I think this is a good thing certainly for the customer, the market forces decide. We have a full-fledged portfolio going forward. Yes, we have super attractive high-tech electrified ICE cars that will be kept with state-of-the-art technology.
MB.OS will find its way into the ICE cars as well and so on and so forth. We have successful long-range plug-in hybrids, kind of been a little bit of a renaissance of that in the U.S. market recently. I think we are good positioned there. Here we are probably the leading premium luxury manufacturer in that segment in the markets where it is most relevant. Then we have the fireworks of battery electric vehicles. In spite of the announcement that they would take the $7,500 credit away, we do not believe that the BEV demand in the United States goes to zero. We still think that the medium to long-term adoption rate of BEVs in the U.S. will creep upwards.
Maybe it will creep upwards slower than if the previous regulatory trajectory had been kept in place, but nevertheless we believe in the mid to long term it will creep upward. We have an all-of-the-above offering and we will let the market forces decide what the take rate will be and are looking forward to delighting our customers in the United States and also look at the United States in the long term as a growth market obviously as Harald just said.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Stephen. Thank you very much, everyone. This concludes our Q& A session. Thank you to both of you, Harald and Ola, for answering the questions, and of course, as always, Investor Relations remains at your disposal to answer any further questions that you may have. Now to all of you, have a great morning, a great afternoon, and a great evening. Thank you and goodbye.