Daimler, MAN SE, target earnings growth on truck sales in Brazil, Russia

MAN SE, Europe’s third-biggest truckmaker, said it will raise full-year forecasts next month and Daimler AG, the world’s biggest, said profit will recover because of growth in emerging markets such as Brazil and Russia.

MAN will increase its return-on-sales target when third- quarter earnings figures are released in October, Chief Financial Officer Frank Lutz said at a press briefing in Hanover, Germany. Daimler said its truck division will probably achieve an earnings before interest and taxes target of about 1 billion euros ($1.3 billion), rebounding from a loss in 2009.

The Daimler Trucks unit’s eight-month deliveries rose 33 percent, jumping 68 percent in Latin America and 76 percent in Indonesia while eastern European sales more than doubled “from a very low level,” it said. MAN’s forecasts now seem “rather conservative,” as orders have exceeded sales every month in 2010, and “the curve is pointing clearly upwards, both in Europe and abroad,” Lutz said at the Hanover Trucks Show.

“We’re experiencing an upswing” in the commercial-vehicle market, Andreas Renschler, head of Daimler Trucks, said during a separate press conference today at the trade show.

MAN fell 0.3 percent to 77.76 euros at the 5:30 p.m. close of trading in Frankfurt. Daimler gained 0.3 percent to 45.64 euros.

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