Strongly positioned

2024 was remarkable in many ways. Our brands were very successful despite challenging market conditions. We delivered our highest adjusted operating return on sales to date: 9.2%. At our Capital Markets Day in October, we communicated our new financial ambitions. For 2029, we are aiming at an adjusted operating return on sales of 9% to 11%. Our share price performance was also very positive, and TRATON was uplisted to the MDAX in June 2024. I was also pleased that our investor relations work won the Investors’ Darling award. We also continued to diversify our financing sources and issued bonds in currencies other than the euro for the first time. Specifically, these currencies included the British pound sterling, the Swedish krona, and the Swiss franc. This was an important step that will help us meet the rising financing need for our TRATON Financial Services business. Finally, we made tremendous progress in our work to set up a new organization within Group Finance that will enable us to provide the best possible support to the Group functions research and development, purchasing, production and logistics.

In 2024, we experienced a market normalization in North America and Europe, and this change led to a decline in demand. Nonetheless, we hit our financial targets, and we can be proud of our achievement. This shows that our range of brands is well positioned across various regions globally. In 2025, we are proceeding with our dual transformation process – one internal and the other external. In terms of the external transformation process, the focus will remain on electrification, autonomous driving, and digitalization. In terms of the internal transformation process, the TRATON GROUP will continue to grow together: forming a strong group from four strong previously independent brands. The most striking example of this internal transformation process is the creation of a new Group function for R&D, led by Niklas Klingenberg. We are also moving forward on the development of TRATON Financial Services as a captive and integrated provider of financial services. This will allow us to further expand our range of services.

We can also look back on many successful milestones in 2024 here. We put the core values that we jointly developed in 2023 into place throughout the Group. In 2024, we also defined a complementary set of management principles for the entire TRATON GROUP. In addition, we continued to harmonize processes and methods within the TRATON GROUP. Our focus remains our attractiveness as an employer because this is a crucial element of our employee loyalty. Our appeal as an employer is also a very important aspect of our effort to recruit new staff. Our offer of professional development opportunities, our diverse and inclusive teams , flexible working options, attractive remuneration models and TRATON's positive reputation all play an important role in this. We offer talented individuals an exciting working environment in which they can actively shape the dual transformation of our Group and the transport sector. At TRATON, this is happening in a corporate culture in which team spirit and trust form the basis for collaboration and the success of our projects. With their hard work and dedication, our employees are the key to the success of TRATON.

In my new role as a member of the Executive Board, I am responsible for R&D at the TRATON GROUP. My key focus is to ensure that we tap the full potential of the TRATON Modular System to deliver outstanding products that make our brands more successful and bring value to our customers.

The TRATON GROUP is undergoing a significant transformation: we are establishing a unified, Group-wide R&D function, pooling most of our resources from the brands into a new Group function, thereby strengthening collaboration across our brands. To build a world-class R&D organization, we need the right foundation. This involves standardizing product development processes and implementing uniform IT systems within R&D.

Making R&D a core responsibility of the Executive Board reflects the Company’s commitment to this strategic change and underlies its importance for our future success.

We successfully accomplished most of our goals for 2024, such as introducing a new R&D management team for the TRATON GROUP and establishing area and global domain managers, who are responsible for building and optimizing the R&D function. Looking ahead to 2025, we will focus on setting up the functional structure for Group R&D.

For “Day One”, the official launch of the new organization as a legal entity, we have worked closely with employee representatives to prepare for the transition of our workforce into this new unit. Many teams across the Group, particularly in R&D, Finance, Legal, HR, and IT, have been instrumental in preparing the necessary processes and structures for this milestone.

Essentially, we are creating a new Group function within the TRATON GROUP — no small feat, especially given the diversity of cultures, backgrounds, and teams involved.

Despite this major transformation, our primary focus remains unchanged: developing innovative products and solutions for our brands. I am proud to say that we achieved excellent results in this regard throughout 2024.

By pooling our resources, we eliminate the need to develop similar products multiple times across four brands. This allows us to allocate the Group’s budget more efficiently to address challenges like electrification, autonomous driving, and digitalization, while maintaining the competitive edge.

Group Product Management gathers the needs and requirements from our brands, manages the portfolio, and ensures brand differentiation. R&D’s role is to deliver innovative technical solutions to meet these requirements.

The TRATON Modular System is a key enabler in this process, allowing us to develop components with balanced performance steps that can be used by all brands in their different markets.

With standardized interfaces, this approach will significantly reduce costs, and the resulting savings will be reinvested to enhance customer value — whether through additional performance steps or entirely new functionalities.