The DB Group has reported its H1 2020 figures, marking a revenue drop of 11.8%, to €19.4bn, in the first half of 2020.
DB Schenker has done well in the crisis, despite falling revenues. DB Schenker was able to demonstrate its importance and the company lifted adjusted earnings before interest and taxes to €278m, an increase of 16.8% Y-o-Y. External revenue for DB Schenker was only down by 0.7% compared to H1 2019. The relatively strong development was mainly driven by airfreight business. However, generally the divisions have been performing negatively in the freight forwarding and logistics business due to Covid-19 and economic developments.
Land transport fell 4.1% Y-o-Y to 51.7m shipments; air freight fell 14.4% Y-o-Y to 495 thousand tonnes; ocean freight decreased 11% Y-o-Y, falling to 992 thousand TEUs; while contract logistics reported a drop of 3.9% Y-o-Y to €1.3m in H1 2020.
In 2019 DB Schenker constituted about 39% of the Group’s revenue, whereas it increased to 43% in H1 2020. EBITDA increased by €70m or 14% for the division, while DB Group EBITDA dropped by 93.8%, to €157m. EBIT figures for Schenker increased 16.8%, from €238m to €278m in H1 2020.
“Covid-19 put an abrupt stop to the successful growth we were seeing, and plunged DB into the worst financial crisis in its history,” said Dr. Richard Lutz, CEO and Chairman of the Management Board of DB, in Berlin. “But the virus has also shown how critically important rail is for Germany and Europe”, he added.
The DB Group is reportedly investing record sums to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic and return to a path of growth. DB has seen its financials hit hard by the pandemic, which caused revenues and profits to fall sharply in the first six months of 2020. DB closed out the first half of the year with adjusted earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT adjusted) of -€1.8bn. Extraordinary effects driven mainly by an impairment at the subsidiary DB Arriva of €1.4bn have been recorded additionally, leading in total to an after taxes loss of 3.7bn in the first half of 2020.
Source: DB Group
