Daimler Truck's 40% share gain outruns a quarter where net profit fell 48%

Index second-quarter revenue at 105 and net profit at 52 against 100 and 100 a year earlier, and the net margin comes out at 0.495 of the prior-year level, roughly half ^[2]. Tariffs did most of that ^[4]. The recovery the company points to for the rest of the year rests on price increases announced earlier and a more favourable tariff arrangement with the US ^[5], which means fleet customers fund part of it, and the shares at 46.24 euros are priced on a half that has not been reported ^[2].

The zero-emission line is a growth rate. Fortune reports 67% for 2025 without unit volumes ^[3].

Then the China figures. Chinese electric cars took 14.2% of Western European purchases in the first five months of 2026, against 3% in 2024, according to Schmidt Automotive Research ^[6], about 4.7 times the share in two years ^[3]. Those are cars. Fortune reports the European truck market as relatively secure for now ^[7], and Howard Yu, a professor of management and innovation at IMD Business School, says Chinese EVs are simply better than much of the competition ^[8].

Inside the company, the change is about who decides. In one of her first meetings Radstrom was handed the designs for a new truck cab to formally approve, and important decisions arrived with a lengthy slide deck ^[12]. "Those things don't work in the changing environment that we have now," she said ^[13]. Her instruction to the company is to operate "simpler, faster, and stronger" ^[14]. "You never have 100% of the information you'd like," she said, "so if you don't decide, you might miss big opportunities" ^[11].

Klas Bergelind, managing director and industrial tech and mobility analyst at Citi, credits her with a more decentralized organization and with pushing staff to drop bureaucratic practices ^[9]. He also said: "Cultural change takes time, and while costs are gradually lowered, other temporary cost headwinds are weighing on results" ^[10].

In my view the 40% since 2024 is a tariff and pricing trade ^[2], with the culture work as option value on top. The counter-thesis is that a category moving from 3% to 14.2% of Western European car purchases in two years ^[6] is what a truck market looks like several years early, and on that reading the 67% zero-emission growth is the asset being bought ^[3]. A third path: the US arrangement lands, margins recover, and China stays a car problem for the rest of the decade ^[5]. The next reported quarter separates them. If net profit clears the year-earlier level on the announced pricing ^[4][5], the re-rating was earned on earnings; if revenue keeps growing 5% while profit stays halved, 46.24 euros was a price for something further out ^[2].