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BONN (dpa-AFX) - The logistics group DHL is not ruling out a further decline in profits for 2024. A broad economic recovery is still a long way off, as the company announced in Bonn on Wednesday. Only for the second half of the decade does CEO Tobias Meyer expect, in the best-case scenario, a result close to the record level of 2022. Despite a surprisingly significant drop in profits last year, shareholders are to receive a stable dividend. Meyer also wants to extend and increase the share buyback program. DHL shares fell sharply after the news.

The stock was the biggest loser on the DAX, falling by almost seven percent to 38.83 euros. Since the turn of the year, the share price losses have totaled over 13 percent. The last time the share price was this low was in November.

At that time, the Group had lowered its operating profit targets for 2023 and 2025. In the conference call with analysts, however, the management was still encouraging about the final quarter and held out the prospect that the lowered forecasts were due in particular to the only slightly delayed economic recovery.

However, there has been no improvement so far and instead companies are continuing to reduce their inventories due to the weak economy. Only when this comes to an end are transport volumes between companies likely to grow again - and business at DHL to improve.

For 2026, DHL CEO Meyer expects operating earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) of EUR 7.5 to 8.5 billion. On average, analysts had only expected the lower end of the range. In the best-case scenario, the Group would exceed its record result of over 8.4 billion in 2022.

At the moment, however, the recovery in global trade is still sluggish. "Major uncertainty factors such as volatility in demand and geopolitical crises will remain with us in 2024," said Meyer. For the first half of the year, he still does not expect a broad economic upturn, but in some cases a further decline in transport volumes.

For the second half of the year, Meyer expects global economic momentum to be more positive than in the previous year. Operating profit is expected to reach EUR 6 to 6.6 billion in 2024 as a whole. This means that DHL would only perform better than last year in the upper half of the range.

Last year, DHL recorded an even sharper drop in profits than expected. The surplus plummeted by almost a third to just under 3.7 billion euros. In day-to-day business, the Bonn-based company earned a good 6.3 billion euros before interest and taxes, around a quarter less than in the record year 2022. Analysts had expected an average of more than 6.4 billion euros. Nevertheless, Swiss Post intends to pay a stable dividend of 1.85 euros per share.

Adjusted for one-off effects, the operating result is even more clearly below average market expectations, noted industry expert Samuel Bland from US bank JPMorgan. The one-off effects include costs for the early retirement program in the domestic mail and parcel business, as well as income from the now fully consolidated business in the United Arab Emirates.

Bland wrote in his first reaction to the figures that the Bonn-based company had performed weakly in all areas. His colleagues at US analyst firm Bernstein Research pointed to a weak final quarter in the high-margin business with time-critical shipments. It again accounted for around half of the Group's operating result last year.

In this context, CFO Melanie Kreis reported in a conference call with analysts that an imbalance in trade flows had impaired the profitability of the express network in the fourth quarter. DHL had to purchase expensive transport capacities from third-party providers in order to meet the strong demand for time-critical shipments from Asia. At the same time, capacity utilization in the Asian domestic market and the important European market was weak.

In general, the classic peak season at the end of the year was definitely noticeable in the end customer business, reported the management. However, an improvement in the business customer segment is still a long time coming. And no significant recovery in shipment volumes has yet been observed in the new year either.

On Wednesday, the Management Board also put an end to speculation that had arisen in recent months about the takeover of Deutsche Bahn subsidiary Schenker. The Bonn-based company will not be throwing its hat into the ring. "The Schenker wedding seems to be a done deal, but we are not the husband," Group CEO Meyer told the TV station CNBC on Wednesday morning.

For DHL, the focus remains on acquisitions that could strategically complement the business, he said in the presentation to the analysts' conference. For this reason, a conscious decision was made not to participate in the Schenker takeover process. In this context, analyst Patrick Creuset from Goldman Sachs also referred to statements by the Group's management that there is only a limited budget for complementary acquisitions./lew/mis/jha/