DHL Group Compounding earnings growth via positive Express operating leverage; remain OW with PT up to €65 implying >15% upside

Research evidence excerpt

J P M O R G A N

Europe Equity Research

06 August 2026

DHL Group

Compounding earnings growth via positive Express

operating leverage; remain OW with PT up to €65

implying >15% upside

Overweight

DHLn.DE, DHL GR

Price (05 Aug 26):€55.38

▲Price Target (Dec-27):€65.00

Prior (Dec-27):€60.00

DHL reported a strong 2Q26 EBIT with organic group revenue accelerating to

+13% y/y and EBIT +30% y/y to €1.86bn, importantly driven by a return to volume

growth and strong positive operating leverage in Express. This reflected a clear

inflection in organic growth with TDI weight/day +9.4% y/y, continued yield/cost

discipline, and a benefit from the tight air freight market (€150m in Express or

2-3% of WpD growth; €25-50m in Global Forwarding). We see this quarter as

delivering an important inflection point of organic volume trends as the first real

quarter of growth resuming, even adjusting for the benefit from the Middle East

disruption. While the recent share price performance has broadly anticipated these

positive effects, we remain OW and increase our Dec-27 PT to €65 (previously

€60) partly on higher estimates but also applying a lower integrator discount (now

20% vs. 25% previously) to reflect management’s better execution in recent years.

The shares in our view continue to offer attractive TSR with >15% upside potential,

trading on a 2027 P/E of 14x vs. EPS growth of over >10% to 2029 and a 4%

dividend yield.

Resumption of organic volume growth finally coming through; Express

heavy weight strategy now delivering. The key highlight of the 2Q26 results

was the strong resumption of organic growth in Express with WpD delivering

9.4% growth y/y; of which we estimate 2-3% was driven by the Middle East

disruptions. While some of this volume may not endure, we see the outlook as

supportive of an ongoing volume recovery (helped by easy comps but also

targeted by DHL’s heavy-weight strategy), with Europe a key region for scope

of further improvement in performance, which will allow this key division to

continue to deliver outsized earnings growth driven by the positive operating

leverage. Following several years of challenging top-line performance, we

…