Shares of the German automobile concern Daimler AG (DE: DAIGn) rose more than 3% at the beginning of Wednesday session after the car manufacturer of Mercedes reported a quarterly profit that exceeded forecasts due to one-time revenues and increased sales of luxury cars.
The company unveiled key figures before the release of full financial results scheduled for April 26, saying on Tuesday that earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) jumped 87% to 4.01 billion euro ($ 4.25 billion), in part due to one-time revenues amounting to 690 million euro.
After some hours, shares of Daimler slowed growth, trading 1.2% higher than the previous close.
The EBIT of Mercedes-Benz Cars grew by 60% to 2.23 billion euro; the sales margin was 9.8% after the unit reported a 15% increase in sales in the first quarter.
Only in March, sales of Mercedes-Benz E-Class cars jumped by 65%.
At the end of March, the company said it was waiting for record sales volumes of the Mercedes-Benz Cars division in the first quarter.
As for the German stock market as a whole, it finished Wednesday higher due to the strengthening of the retail, consumer goods and media sectors.
At the close on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, DAX 30 went up by 0.13%, the MDAX index increased by 0.39%, and the TecDAX index rose 0.16%.
In the growth leaders among the components of the DAX 30 index were the shares of Henkel & Co KGaA AG Pref (DE: HNKG_p), which rose 1.60 points (1.32%), closing at 123.20, Adidas AG (ADSGN) – up 1.65 points (0.94%), to 177.45 and Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (DE: BMWG) – up 0.760 points (0.92%) to 83.390.
Meanwhile, EUR/USD rose 0.05% to 1.0609, and EUR/GBP fell 0.01% to 0.88489.
The USD index fell 0.04% to 100.59.