By Kim Richters 
 

Daimler AG said Friday that earnings for the third quarter increased despite the semiconductor shortage that hurt production and vehicle sales.

Net profit for the quarter rose to 2.47 billion euros ($2.89 billion), from EUR2.05 billion a year earlier, the German premium car maker said. Earnings before interest and taxes increased 17% to EUR3.58 billion and adjusted for items such as restructuring measures, EBIT rose 4% to EUR3.61 billion.

Quarterly revenue edged lower to EUR40.08 billion from EUR40.28 billion.

Daimler said a better revenue quality with an improved product mix and good pricing has helped offset considerably lower production and vehicle sales due to the chip shortage that has been affecting global auto production for months.

At a conference call about its third-quarter results, the auto maker's Chief Financial Officer Harald Wilhelm said Daimler hopes to continue the pricing and revenue-quality trend. "There are levers to do so," he said.

A tight control of fixed costs also helped results, the car maker said. Mr. Wilhelm said Daimler had reduced fixed costs by around 15% versus 2019 levels so far. He said this was a good start but they needed to go down further.

Looking ahead, Daimler said it continues to expect group revenue and EBIT in 2021 to be significantly above prior-year levels.

For Mercedes-Benz cars, the company cut its outlook to slightly lower vehicle sales in 2021 compared with 2020, down from a previous forecast of prior-year level sales. Mercedes-Benz vans should post vehicle sales at prior-year level, lowered from a previous outlook of sales significantly above the ones in 2020, the company said. Daimler nevertheless kept the margin target for the division that includes cars and vans, expecting it to reach adjusted return on sales of between 10% to 12% this year.

Daimler said it expects component bottlenecks and supply-chain constraints to continue to affect global auto production in the fourth quarter. While the chip shortage should improve in the last quarter of the year compared with the third, it should remain an issue in 2022, it said.

After opening slightly lower, shares in Daimler were trading 1.3% higher at EUR84.95 at 0941 GMT.

Write to Kim Richters at kim.richters@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 29, 2021 06:19 ET (10:19 GMT)