FRANKFURT (dpa-AFX) - Shares of vehicle manufacturers rose on Tuesday following sales figures. As with other industry representatives at the beginning of the week, investors also took a relaxed view of the decline in sales at Daimler Truck, Traton and Volkswagen (VW).

In the afternoon, Daimler Truck was the top performer in the Dax, with a 2.7 percent gain to 38.65 euros. The truck and bus maker's shares had fallen over the previous two trading days.

Daimler Truck sold 12 percent fewer commercial vehicles in 2020 than in the previous year, but in the final quarter, sales were 5 percent above market expectations, according to analyst Nick Housden of Canadian investment bank RBC and Daniela Costa of US-based Goldman Sachs. The latter also attributed the reduction in inventories to this. In addition, a major order from online retailer Amazon for 200 heavy-duty electric trucks from the Swabians was well received by investors.

The recently similarly weak stocks of VW commercial vehicle holding Traton also benefited from the positive sales figures: they rose by 4.8 percent to 27.30 euros in the small cap index SDax. Traton delivered only 1 percent fewer vehicles in the past quarter than a year earlier.

Apart from the VW Truck & Bus division, all areas had surprised on the upside, Costa commented. Nicolai Kempf of Deutsche Bank Research also expects Traton to have received more vehicle orders in the past quarter than in the third quarter. He reiterates his buy recommendation for the stock and, with a confirmed price target of €42, is more than 50 percent above the current valuation level.

VW shares also rose after sales figures showed a decline of 2.3 percent for the months October to December. However, since they had already risen on Monday following figures from the subsidiary Porsche AG and Audi, the latest increase was only 1.4 percent to 92.14 euros. This meant that the share price remained just below the highest level since the end of October, which was reached the day before.

In the wake of the friendly car stocks across Europe, BMW and Mercedes-Benz rose by 1.2 and 1.1 percent respectively on Tuesday. Unlike their competitors from Stuttgart, the Munich-based company was unable to post a positive share price performance on Monday following its own sales figures. The fact that Goldman was skeptical about the prospects of premium manufacturers in an industry study on Tuesday had little impact on share prices./gl/ck/he