Mercedes-Benz Shares Touch Fresh Low as EBIT Slide and Worker Resistance Deepen

Stock hits €42.64 low amid 29% YTD decline; net profit halves to €5.3B; CEO defers bonuses, works council fights 40-hour week push.

Mercedes-Benz marked its centenary this week, but the celebration was overshadowed by a fresh 52-week low in its stock. The shares touched €42.64 on Monday before recovering slightly to €43.98, a gain that feels more like a pause than a reversal. With the stock down nearly 29% since the start of the year, the automaker’s milestone has been anything but joyous.

The broader technical picture remains bleak. The share price now sits roughly 20% below the 200-day moving average of €54.95, a level that underlines the established downward trend. The relative strength index has fallen to 34.2, hovering just above the oversold threshold of 30, which could lure in tactical buyers. Yet the 30-day annualised volatility of 29.1% betrays the market's persistent unease.

That unease is grounded in a sharp deterioration in earnings. Net profit for the 2025 financial year nearly halved to €5.3 billion, while first-quarter EBIT for 2026 slumped 16.8% to €1.9 billion. The quarterly net result fell 17.2% to €1.43 billion. Behind those numbers lies a structural cost problem: labour expenses in Germany averaged €45 per hour in 2025, roughly €10 above the EU average and 29% higher than the bloc's norm. German unit labour costs also exceeded the average of 27 peer countries by 22% in 2024.

CEO Ola Källenius has responded with an aggressive austerity drive. A contractual special bonus, equivalent to 18.4% of a monthly salary, has been unilaterally deferred to 2027 — a move that infuriated the works council. Chief labour director Britta Seeger imposed the delay without prior negotiation, drawing sharp criticism from employee representatives. Adding fuel to the fire, supervisory board chairman Martin Brudermüller has demanded a return to the 40-hour work week without any wage compensation. The works council has refused to discuss the matter unless IG Metall signals openness, leaving the dispute deadlocked.

The cost-cutting push extends beyond working conditions. Mercedes-Benz has set aside roughly €1.6 billion for severance packages and is exploring shifting production capacity abroad. At the same time, the company is pragmatically reviving powerful V8 engines for its luxury segment, a retreat from its earlier all-electric rhetoric, as demand for high-end EVs wanes. On the regulatory front, the carmaker is lobbying alongside Volkswagen and Renault for EU “supercredits” that would give manufacturers an advantage in fleet emission calculations for small electric cars under 4.2 metres. BMW opposes the plan, arguing for efficiency criteria instead of length-based measures.

The share price closed the latest session at €43.95, a mere 3% above the new low. The gap to the 52-week high of €62.30 stands at nearly 30%. The stock has shed roughly 15% of its value over the past 30 days alone.

Whether the savings measures can stabilise margins by year-end depends largely on resolving the labour dispute. So long as the works council remains confrontational, and no breakthrough emerges with IG Metall, management will continue to face intense pressure. Investors will have to wait for the next quarterly report for concrete signs of a turnaround.