2024-07-25 18:31:57
Half-year balance sheet
Deutsche Bahn makes billions in losses – 30,000 jobs to be cut
Updated on 25.07.2024 – 19:27Reading time: 3 min.
Deutsche Bahn had a challenging first half of the year. There is still no prospect of relief, as major restructuring projects are pending – and massive job cuts.
Deutsche Bahn made a loss of 1.2 billion euros in the first half of the year. The company announced this when presenting its half-year financial statements on Thursday. Sales were 22.31 billion euros. Around 64.2 million passengers used DB trains in the first six months.
Financially, the first half of the year was not good for the state-owned company. The company therefore has to save money. Chief Financial Officer Levin Holle stressed: “In the future, we have to create more rail with fewer people.”
The company will therefore cut thousands of jobs, particularly in administration. “We want to reduce personnel requirements by around 30,000 full-time employees over the next five years,” said Holle. However, Deutsche Bahn CEO Lutz stressed that where staff are needed, large numbers of people will continue to be hired. In total, Deutsche Bahn has around 211,000 employees in Germany.
Lutz dismissed speculation about a reduction in long-distance traffic. “There are neither concrete nor other plans to structurally and sustainably reduce any long-distance traffic connections,” he said. For the coming year, the company has “registered everything that we are currently driving.” Lutz said, however, that traffic has currently been reduced in some places due to the high level of construction activity.
The only company that made a notable profit was the international freight forwarding company Schenker, which is up for sale. It achieved an operating profit of 520 million euros, but this was also 100 million euros less than in the same period last year.
Nevertheless, the company wants to make a profit at the end of the year: it will report a profit before interest and taxes (EBIT) of around one billion euros in 2024, the state-owned company announced in Berlin on Thursday. The railway company no longer mentioned the target of an operating profit of over one billion euros that it had announced in March.
The company is still in difficult waters: extreme weather events led to a particularly high rate of delays, especially in June. The problems also became apparent during the European Football Championship, which is why the transport company once again had to endure a lot of criticism.
Only just under 63 percent of long-distance trains were running without major delays in the first six months of this year. Deutsche Bahn has already missed its annual target for 2024. The situation is also difficult financially. On the one hand, the mountain of debt amounted to around 34 billion euros by the end of last year. Due to the unsecured financing from the federal government, Deutsche Bahn also made advance payments on infrastructure projects in 2023.
The comprehensive renovation of important route corridors is currently underway in order to make the outdated network fit for the long term. The section between Frankfurt and Mannheim has been closed for a few weeks in order to be completely renovated. The general renovation of 40 other corridors is planned by 2031. For passengers, this initially means more restrictions. But after the modernization of the central Frankfurt-Mannheim route, long-distance traffic should become somewhat more reliable again.
The diversion and replacement concepts worked well, the company said before announcing its financial results for the first half of the year. “Up to 16,000 passengers are on the replacement service every day.”
The deployment of around 150 new replacement buses is running smoothly and local and long-distance traffic on the diversion routes is stable, it said. The construction work is on schedule, but it only started ten days ago. In the first few days, noise barriers were put up, overhead lines were removed and the first tracks were renewed. The modernization is to be completed by the timetable change on December 15. Until then, the section will be closed.