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Assembly worker at the Mercedes-Benz plant in Sindelfingen
Photo: Sebastian Gollnow / DPA
Never before have the DAX companies made as much profit in one quarter as in the second quarter of 2021. Overall, the 30 most important listed companies generated a total profit of almost 45 billion euros - an increase of 87 percent compared to the pre-crisis year 2019. This emerges from a current analysis by the auditing and consulting company EY on the basis of the company's annual and quarterly reports.
"The second quarter of this year was extremely strong," said Henrik Ahlers, CEO of EY.
"Although the pandemic is ongoing, the global economy has recovered surprisingly quickly." Demand clearly exceeds supply in many areas, resulting in an extraordinarily favorable price environment for some companies, which explains at least part of the high profits.
Corporations use the crisis to cut costs
Car manufacturers brought in the highest profits in the second quarter: Volkswagen, Daimler and BMW together generated an operating profit of 16.7 billion euros, after these three companies had presented deep red figures in the same period of the previous year with a total loss of 4.7 billion euros.
Despite the outstanding figures, there is a high level of uncertainty: »The pandemic is far from over, new lockdowns could break the supply chains again and cause sales losses. On top of that, the lack of supplier products and semiconductors will cause considerable problems for some time to come, ”said Ahlers.
The currently high profits are also related to the fact that many corporations have stepped on the cost brakes in the past few months and cut massive jobs.
26 companies provided information to EY on the development of employment: 13 of them reported a decrease in the number of employees, while 13 reported an increase - albeit partly due to acquisitions.
“Sales and profits are currently increasing significantly, while we are seeing a sideways movement in the number of employees.
This shows that generally cost discipline and, above all, the reduction of fixed costs are right at the top of the agenda at the moment, «said Ahlers.
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