(Frankfurt|Berlin, March 27, 2014) Once again, more passengers on Deutsche Bahn trains: In 2013, the number of passengers increased again compared to the previous year. Throughout the year, Deutsche Bahn transported more than two billion passengers in German rail passenger transport, 42 million more than in the previous year. This positive development was primarily supported by a sustained growth in regional transport. "This upward trend is good news in this, the 20th anniversary of the German rail reform", explained Dr. Rüdiger Grube, CEO and Chairman of the Management Board, at the presentation of the 2013 annual results in Frankfurt. He pointed out that the numbers of new car registrations and domestic German air passenger numbers had declined and concluded, "the general mobility trend is clearly leaning toward train travel."
However, at the same time, Grube indicated that Deutsche Bahn had faced enormous challenges in 2013: "Economic growth progressed worse than expected in many places – and that was reflected in the demand for our transport and logistics services." At EUR 39.1 billion, revenues in the 2013 financial year remained roughly at the level of the previous year (EUR 39.3 billion). Deutsche Bahn also faced substantial pressure from rising factor costs, primarily for employees and energy, as well as from the consequences of the flood and two storms. The adjusted EBIT declined by EUR 472 million (-17.4%) to EUR 2.2 billion. Net capital expenditures were largely unchanged and, at EUR 3.4 billion in 2013, EUR 75 million lower than in the previous year. Net financial debt remained stable at EUR 16.4 billion. As Chief Financial Officer Dr. Richard Lutz stated: "No doubt about it—the figures are not satisfactory. But current trends raise hopes that the situation will improve over the course of this year."
Even though Deutsche Bahn was only able to partially reach its economic goals in 2013, there was encouraging progress made in the top employer and eco-pioneer dimensions of the DB2020 strategy. More than 11,000 employees were hired in Germany last year, along with an additional 4,000 new vocational trainees and cooperative education students. Dr. Grube viewed these figures as a sign that Deutsche Bahn continues to be seen as an attractive employer. In terms of the environmental dimension, Grube was also able to announce that encouraging progress had been made: "We had resolved to increase the renewable energy sources in the traction current mix to 35% by 2020. We have already reached this target at the end of 2013."
Passenger transport
After a significant increase in the first six months of 2013, the number of passengers travelling with Deutsche Bahn long-distance trains decreased substantially in the second half of the year due to track closures lasting several months and delays as a consequence of the flood. As a result, the number of customers compared to the previous year remained stable over the course of the year at 131 million passengers. The trend towards rail continued for local and regional transport within Germany. This was the decisive factor for the recent overall increase in passenger numbers in Germany.
Transport and logistics
The decreased demand for transport services due to the economy had a negative effect on the development in rail freight transport, resulting in a 1.5% decline in transport volume to 104.3 billion ton kilometers. The development of DB Schenker Logistics' business segments also remained mixed. Although the shipment volume increased slightly by 0.2% in European land transport, air freight volume decreased slightly by 0.3%. Ocean freight also saw a decline of 0.7%. In contrast, contract logistics reported a strong increase in revenues of 5.2%.
Infrastructure
The train-path demand decreased slightly in 2013 and was at 1.0 billion train-path kilometers. Non-DB railways were able to increase their proportion by two percentage points to 24%.