Deutsche Bahn’s pre-tax earnings took a €250 million hit in the first half of 2015 as a result of a protracted labour dispute with train drivers.
Although revenues increased slightly by 1.3 per cent to €20 billion, the group’s EBIT fell by 18.2 per cent (€198 million) to 890 million, largely because of a series of driver strikes in May and severe bad weather.
DB’s chief executive Dr Rüdiger Grube said May’s industrial action, described as “the largest and most serious collective bargaining dispute in the history of DB”, cost the company around €250 million – €500 million combined with 2014’s industrial action.
In the same period, passenger numbers fell by 1.6 per cent to 985 million.
The strikes also impacted on DB’s freight subsidiary, DB Schenker, which saw its output fall by 6 per cent from 52 billion tonne-kilometres (tkm) to 48.9 tkm.
International traffic operated by Arriva provided a welcome boost, growing by 2.5 percent to 4.3 billion passenger kilometres. But despite seeing revenues rise by €165 million, it too had a reduced EBIT, down 2.9 per cent to €101 million.
DB chief financial officer Dr Richard Lutz said: “We cannot be satisfied with our earnings in the first half of the year.
“But we are optimistic that now, that the strikes are over, we will be in a position to generate an EBIT of EUR 2 billion in the second half of the year. We plan to use the measures we have launched and plan to launch to give us the room we need to finance our planned investments, growth and digitalisation campaigns in a sound manner.”
Announcing the group’s financial results, Dr Grube reasserted DB’s restructuring programme, which aims to save the organisation €700 million by 2020.
The six-point plan involves reducing the number of board members from eight to six, merging DB Mobility Logistics with DB AG, assigning DB Systemtechnik and Safety and Quality Management to the new Infrastructure, Services and Technology Division, reviewing the responsibilities of the management board to focus on domestic rail operations, a possible partial privitisation of DB Arriva and DB Schenker Logistics, and a reorganisation of internal services.
