Daimler to be renamed Mercedes-Benz Group on Feb 1

Daimler to be renamed Mercedes-Benz Group on Feb 1

A year after it announced the spin-off of its truck and bus division, Daimler will formally be renamed Mercedes-Benz Group AG on February 1, in a move its CEO hopes will unlock shareholder value for the brand, Reuters reports.

The naming change is the latest in a string of structural reshuffles for the automaker, which began life as Daimler-Benz AG in 1926. In February last year, the company announced that its truck and bus business would be spun off and listed separately as Daimler Truck, effectively creating two independent companies with their own management and chairman.

Now, the second part of the equation is set to be finalised with the renaming of Daimler, a move the automaker says has been designed to unlock growth and the full potential of its business in a zero-emissions, software-driven future.

Daimler to be renamed Mercedes-Benz Group on Feb 1

“We have a real chance to raise the multiple,” Daimler CEO Ola Kaellenius said last week, referring to how some aspects of a company’s financial well-being are measured. He did not however state a specific target valuation for the firm, which is now worth just under €77 billion (RM360 billion).

However, analysts said that a premium-car maker battling over the luxury market, which is by definition small and finite, could only grow so much. “Investors could start viewing Mercedes as a Lucid Motors or Tesla type and start to give it an EV (electric vehicle) multiple,” said Tom Naraya, an European auto analyst at RBC Capital Markets.

“But Lucid and Tesla get to start at 100% EV. For Mercedes, you have to convert your existing internal combustion engine business to EVs. That may be a limitation on how far the multiple could go near-term,” he explained.

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Anthony Lim

Anthony Lim believes that nothing is better than a good smoke and a car with character, with good handling aspects being top of the prize heap. Having spent more than a decade and a half with an English tabloid daily never being able to grasp the meaning of brevity or being succinct, he wags his tail furiously at the idea of waffling - in greater detail - about cars and all their intrinsic peculiarities here.

 
 

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