Mercedes-Benz Marks a Century Under a Cloud as Shares Languish Near Record Lows
01.07.2026 - 05:44:37 | boerse-global.de
The Stuttgart-based automaker celebrated 100 years of its storied brand this week, but the champagne was quickly diluted by a grim reality on the trading floor. On Monday, Mercedes-Benz shares touched a fresh 52-week trough of €42.64, before clawing back to €43.98 in a fleeting bounce. By the latest count, the stock sat at €43.83 — barely a whisker above that low and a jarring 28% below the 52-week peak of €62.30.
The anniversary milestone was overshadowed by an earnings bloodbath. For the 2025 financial year, net profit collapsed roughly 49% to €5.3 billion, and the first quarter of 2026 offered no respite: the group result slid 17.2% to €1.43 billion, while EBIT fell by nearly 17% to €1.90 billion. Those numbers help explain the market’s nervousness — and the panic buttons being pushed inside the company.
Slashing Costs and Reversing Strategy
A central drag on profitability is Germany's sky-high labour costs. Last year, a production hour in the country cost €45 on average — 29% more than the EU average. Unit labour costs in 2024 were already 22% above the mean of 27 comparable economies. With margins under siege, management has postponed a scheduled special payment to employees and is pivoting hard on product policy. The strict all-electric push is being softened: powerful V8 engines are returning to the luxury lineup, thanks to looser emissions rules, as the automaker scrambles to shore up near-term earnings while demand for premium EVs remains tepid.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying Mercedes-Benz?
Reshuffling the Bavarian Sales Deck
In parallel, Mercedes-Benz is reorganising its company-owned dealership network in the southern state of Bavaria. Changes in the board of the Bavarian sales association will take effect from July 1, 2026, but some moves are already live. Udo Müller, a 1986 veteran whose career has wound through Dresden, Regensburg and Mannheim-Heidelberg-Landau before returning to Nuremberg in 2009, now wears two hats: he remains head of human resources for the Bavaria and Württemberg clusters while concurrently taking over as site manager in Nuremberg. Thomas Schek, formerly in charge of the van business, has added passenger-car new-vehicle sales to his remit across the Bavarian network. The goal is tighter cooperation among the three hubs — Munich, Augsburg and Nuremberg — to project a more uniform brand image.
Technically Oversold, Fundamentally Uncertain
Market technicians have taken note: the relative strength index has dipped to 33, creeping toward the oversold threshold of 30 that can attract bargain hunters. Yet the annualised 30-day volatility of 29.1% underlines how jittery investors remain. Even if the stock stabilises here, the bigger question is whether Mercedes can reverse the downward earnings spiral. The next quarterly report will offer a crucial read on margins — until then, the pressure is unlikely to lift.
Ad
Mercedes-Benz Stock: New Analysis - 1 July
Fresh Mercedes-Benz information released. What's the impact for investors? Our latest independent report examines recent figures and market trends.
