Deutsche Post parent DHL exceeded its profit target for 2025, even with a slightly weaker fourth quarter.
Although sales fell by 1.6 percent to 82.9 billion euros last year due to negative currency effects and declining transport volumes on routes to the USA, the Bonn-based logistics group managed to increase its operating result (EBIT) by 3.7 percent to 6.1 billion euros. This corresponds to market expectations, but is more than the at least 6 billion euros that the DHL Group had set itself as a target. The EBIT margin rose by 40 basis points to 7.4 percent, the company announced.
All business areas contributed to the profit improvement – with the exception of Global Forwarding, Freight. The forwarding business felt the effects of the weak economy on land in Europe, but especially in Germany, and lower freight rates in the air and at sea. Profits fell by 30 percent. In the German Post & Parcel business, earnings rose by a quarter, with 8,000 jobs cut.
Financial targets exceeded
“Thanks to active capacity management and structural cost improvements, we have exceeded our financial targets,” said CEO Tobias Meyer. The fluctuations in the global economy will continue to affect DHL in the new year, he added.
In 2026, EBIT is expected to continue to rise – then to over 6.2 billion euros. The “Fit for Growth” efficiency program is also intended to help, which contributed more than 600 million euros gross to operating profit last year through standardized and automated processes, as the CEO said. The free cash flow before portfolio changes is estimated at around 3 billion euros. It would therefore decline after rising to 3.2 (previous year: 3.0) billion euros in 2025.
The bottom line is that the DHL Group earned 3.5 billion euros last year – an increase of 5.1 percent or 169 million euros compared to the previous year. In the final quarter, EBIT fell by 1.3 percent and net profit fell by 3.4 percent.
The dividend for the past financial year is expected to increase – by 5 cents to 1.90 euros. This means that 2.1 billion euros or 60.6 percent of the net profit would be distributed.
DHL sees itself as benefiting from the Middle East war
p> The German logistics giant DHL Group sees itself more as a beneficiary of the war between Israel and the USA against Iran. “As a rule, we benefit more from unrest than we suffer from the disadvantages,” said CEO Tobias Meyer in a virtual analyst conference on the occasion of the publication of the 2025 annual balance sheet, no matter how regrettable the acts of war. In a situation like the current one, DHL has always been one of the logistics providers that shippers rely on.
The situation in the Middle East “in no way affects our confidence in the year 2026,” Meyer continued. DHL has a strong presence in the region and has built many strong capabilities in air freight. In the express business, DHL is in the process of introducing emergency surcharges to cover the additional costs.
DHL shares started deep in the red – focus on cost developments
DHL Group shares reacted with losses on Thursday to annual figures and an outlook marked by geopolitical uncertainty. After the early slide of up to almost 6.5 percent to a three-month low, there was ultimately only a minus of 4.63 percent at 45.89 euros via XETRA. This meant that the logistics group still topped the list of losers in the moderately friendly DAX.
Overall, experts had little to complain about what the logistics specialist said about the past year and the new year, although the outlook was received somewhat more critically in some cases. The operating profit met expectations in the final quarter of 2025 and the outlook also corresponds to market estimates, wrote Bernstein analyst Alex Irving.
Both Andy Chu from Deutsche Bank Research and Marco Limite from the British bank Barclays even confirmed that the Bonn-based company had narrowly exceeded expectations with its adjusted operating result (EBIT). Limite also praised the surprisingly high savings last year.
However, only small savings can now be expected in 2026, which could affect the analyst consensus for the operating result (EBIT) in the new year, the Barclays expert pointed out. Analyst Chu spoke of a reasonably conservative outlook for 2026, which is slightly below the consensus estimates provided by DHL in terms of operating profit and cash inflow.
In view of the cost development, he was hoping for more aggressive goals, wrote Michael Aspinall from the investment house Jefferies. But he also acknowledged that the underlying assumption of a subdued economic environment could prove conservative. UBS colleague Cristian Nedelcu called the forecast “disappointing” given the price development since November. In the past four months, DHL shares had gained almost a quarter by Wednesday evening.
DOW JONES / FRANKFURT (dpa-AFX)
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