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Profits halved and Daimler issued another profit warning. Daimler issued its third profit warning in 2019, and earnings before interest and tax in 2019 are expected to fall by 50% to 5.6 billion euros (42.9 billion yuan) from 11.1 billion euros a year earlier, Reuters reported.

Profits halved, Daimler said, adding that costs associated with the diesel scandal, heavy investment in electric vehicles and production problems weighed on the company's full-year earnings.

Among them, the emission fraud of Mercedes-Benz diesel vehicles caused Daimler to suffer additional losses. According to Daimler's preliminary assessment, government and court litigation costs related to the diesel scandal in 2019 range from 1.1 billion to 1.5 billion euros.

Last year KBA, Germany's automobile watchdog, confirmed that Daimler had installed illegal cheating software on diesel engines to avoid stringent emission tests. As a result, Daimler received a 870 million euro fine from German agencies for cheating on emissions. Daimler acknowledged the verdict in a statement.

It is understood that in the past three years, the total number of Daimler emission fraud vehicles recalled has been close to 4 million.

In terms of sales figures, Mercedes-Benz and smart brands sold a total of 2456343 new cars worldwide in 2019, up 0.7% from a year earlier, and won the annual sales title of global luxury brands for the fourth year in a row.

Among them, Mercedes-Benz brand sales of 2339562 vehicles, an increase of 1.3% year-on-year, smart brand sales of about 116800 vehicles, down 9.3% from a year earlier.

In 2019, the Mercedes-Benz and smart brands delivered 702088 new cars, up 4 per cent from a year earlier, while the Mercedes-Benz brand delivered 693443 new cars, up 6.2 per cent from the same period last year. Since 2015, China has been the largest single market in the world for Mercedes-Benz.

Even with the increase in sales, the return on sales of Mercedes-Benz has fallen sharply because of these reasons. Daimler said the return on sales of Mercedes-Benz cars is expected to fall to 4 per cent in 2019, down from 7.8 per cent in 2018.

Over the next few years, Daimler will invest heavily in electric power. According to the plan, Mercedes-Benz hopes to further expand the size of electric vehicles, including pure electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid vehicles, and plans to account for more than 50% of its total sales by 2030.

Ola Kaellenius, Daimler's new chief executive, said 2019 was a challenging year and that the next few years would undergo an unprecedented industry transformation. In this challenging environment, Mercedes-Benz will further improve its sales performance and invest more in new technology and profitable sales growth.

At present, the largest shareholder of Daimler is Geely Group, with 9.7%, while BAIC holds 5% of Daimler, making it the third largest independent shareholder of the latter.

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