STUTTGART—Daimler AG expects significant growth in vehicle sales in 2012, but the German auto giant’s outlook for earnings remains more cautious as it invests heavily in new production facilities and a wider range of cars and trucks amid a mixed global economic outlook.

“We will make substantial investments in our future this year—in new products, new technology and new markets,” Daimler Chief Executive Dieter Zetsche told reporters at a press conference.

“Although these efforts will have a positive medium-term effect, they will burden our finances somewhat this year,” Mr. Zetsche said. Daimler “will strive” to achieve earnings similar to last year’s level.

The goal of keeping 2012 profits stable was welcomed by analysts as many of them had anticipated an earnings slowdown after Daimler’s record earnings last year, reported The Wall Street Journal.

Fourth-quarter net profit attributable to shareholders rose 63 percent on the year to €1.72 billion ($2.28 billion). Daimler’s closely-watched earnings before interest and tax, or EBIT, increased 39 percent year-on-year to €2.18 billion in the fourth quarter. Revenue improved by 10 percent to €29.1 billion.

Daimler said it will increase investment in research and development and new property, plant and equipment by €3.2 billion to €21.5 billion over 2012 and 2013 compared with the period 2010 to 2011.

The group confirmed it plans to open a new engine-making factory in China. It is continuing to expand its line-up of Mercedes-Benz cars including new models at the top end of the range. More versions of its S-Class sedan and a new sports utility vehicle will be launched in the coming years with a hatchback version of its CLS luxury sedan due this September.

The world’s third-bestselling luxury-car maker and largest truck maker by revenue proposed a dividend of €2.20 a share for 2011, up 19 percent from the previous year and a more generous payout than analysts expected.

“We expect dividends to continue to steadily improve in the coming years,” Mr. Zetsche said.

The core Mercedes-Benz Cars unit, which comprises the Mercedes-Benz, Smart and Maybach brands, contributed €1.23 billion to fourth-quarter EBIT after €1.18 billion in 2010. Mr. Zetsche said Daimler targets at least 1.5 million annual car sales from 2014, more than 1.6 million as of 2015 and reiterated that it aims to regain the industry’s top spot by 2020. It sold 1.38 million cars last year.

Daimler said “unit sales will increase again significantly this year and… revenue will continue to grow”.

Daimler shares were up 3.5 percent at €46.24 around 1055 GMT on the Frankfurt bourse.

The auto group’s results were “bang in-line,” said Sanford Bernstein analyst Max Warburton. The key Mercedes-Benz division was in-line with an 8.2 percent profit margin, Mr. Warburton wrote in a note to clients.

While Daimler’s trucks unit wasn’t quite as profitable as expected, the shortfall “was made up by the bizarrely profitable vans business” and buses, he said.

“There don’t seem to be many funnies in these numbers, unusually for Daimler, and cash conversion looked good,” Mr. Warburton said.

Though Mercedes-Benz notched up solid growth in both sales volumes and profit last year, driven by surging demand particularly in China and the U.S., it was outshone by German rival BMW AG, which remained the world’s best-selling premium car maker while reaping fat profit margins at the same time, due partly to a more streamlined cost base.

Volkswagen AG’s Audi brand also overtook Mercedes-Benz as the world’s second-best-selling premium brand in 2011 and posted higher profit margins as well.

Daimler shares were hard-hit during last year’s stock market rout, but regained some ground since the beginning of the year amid a gradual recovery of the overall market. Daimler stock gained around 29 percent since beginning of January, in line with a 26 percent raise of the EuroStoxx Automotive & Parts sector index.

Daimler AG will shut down the super-luxury Maybach brand to end almost a decade of losses from an auto that sells for more than $350,000 when a revamped version of the flagship Mercedes-Benz S-Class comes to market in 2013.

“It would not make sense to develop a successor model,” Chief Executive Officer Dieter Zetsche said in remarks confirmed by Daimler spokesman Marc Binder. “The coming S-Class is in such a way a superior vehicle that it can replace the Maybach.”

Daimler hasn’t made a profit on the Maybach after deciding to reintroduce the 1930s-era marque in 2002, Zetsche said. Mercedes will double variations of the $95,000 S-Class to six as it seeks to boost annual vehicle sales by at least 10,000 a year and step up its challenge to Bayerische Motoren Werke AG as the world’s top luxury-car maker, reported The Detroit News.

BMW and Volkswagen AG’s Audi have grown at more than five times the pace of Mercedes over the past decade by adding new offerings faster. The 125-year-old manufacturer, which has also dropped to third in profitability, lost the luxury-car sales lead to BMW in 2005 and slipped behind Audi this year.

“Mercedes is now also mounting the attack in the high-end segment,” Zetsche said in comments to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper, to be published Saturday. “We have always dominated this segment and that should continue to be the case. We don’t want to wait until the others pull ahead.”

Daimler held extensive internal discussions on “which route promises the greatest possible success in the luxury segment,” before concluding that sales prospects were better at Mercedes than at Maybach, the CEO said.

U.K. luxury sports-car maker Aston Martin, which said at the Frankfurt motor show in September that it expected to conclude talks on cooperation with Mercedes within weeks, declined to comment on the ramifications of Daimler’s comments. Zetsche had said at the expo that the talks concerned Maybach.

“We’ve been talking with Mercedes for some time,” Aston Martin spokesman Matthew Clarke said Friday by telephone.

Maybach hasn’t seriously challenged BMW’s Rolls-Royce and Volkswagen AG’s Bentley since it its reintroduction, with sales topped out at 600 cars in 2003 and sliding to 200 last year. Rolls-Royce sold 2,700 vehicles in 2010 and Bentley 5,100.

Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, poised to become the best-selling luxury brand in the U.S. this year, can keep the spot in 2012’s first quarter as it introduces its redesigned 3-Series sedan.

“We have a window to stay No. 1 in the first quarter,” Ludwig Willisch, who took over BMW’s North American operations Oct. 1, said in an interview yesterday in New York. “Our model lineup is broad. We have a lot of opportunities to get there.”

The BMW brand and Mercedes have been fighting to take the luxury sales crown away from Toyota Motor Corp.’s Lexus, which has been the annual leader for 11 years, reported Bloomberg. BMW ended September in the lead with 177,679 sales while Mercedes is in second place with 170,058. Those results exclude Daimler’s Sprinter vans and Smart cars and BMW’s Mini brand, which aren’t luxury vehicles.

Willisch’s remarks run counter to those of his predecessor, Jim O’Donnell, who said in an August interview that BMW will probably be outsold by Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz early next year before the redesigned 3-Series hits U.S. dealerships.

Updated Mercedes C-Class models went on sale last quarter while BMW is still selling older 3-Series compacts. The 3-Series is slated to hit U.S. showrooms in March or April, BMW says.

“In the first quarter of next year, I would say Mercedes” will be No. 1, O’Donnell said in August. “Mercedes going into 2012 in the first quarter will be in a strong position. Over the course of the year, we still should be ahead of Mercedes.”

BMW isn’t conceding 2012’s first quarter, Willisch said.

“We’re not going to ask our customers to buy another brand,” he said yesterday in an interview at BMW’s dealership on 57th Street in Manhattan.

Lexus, in third place, saw sales fall 16 percent this year to 135,647, hindered by a lack of inventory after the March earthquake and tsunami in Japan reduced output of vehicles.

BMW’s sales success over the past year has been driven by the redesigned 5-Series sedan and X3 sport-utility vehicle.

The 3-Series relies on leasing, and sales are slowing as it nears the end of its product cycle, said Jesse Toprak, an industry analyst with TrueCar.com, a Santa Monica, California- based website that tracks auto sales.

“From the product-lifecycle perspective in terms of leases, it’s a little long-in-tooth,” he said.

U.S. sales of the 3-Series sedan, coupe, convertible and wagon fell 3.9 percent this year through September compared with last year, according to researcher Autodata Corp. The compact line accounts for more than half of the brand’s U.S. car deliveries.

The BMW-Mercedes competition is playing out worldwide. BMW is the global leader followed by Volkswagen AG’s Audi brand and Mercedes. Daimler’s target is to be the top luxury seller globally by 2020.

Willisch, 55, comes to BMW’s Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey, offices from a position as the head of European sales. He has also run BMW’s M performance brand and led sales units in Germany, Japan and Sweden.

WASHINGTON — Daimler AG said Monday that the head of Mercedes-Benz USA has been fired effective immediately.

The company didn’t offer an explanation for his departure, but said he had “been excused from his duties as CEO.”

Han Tjan, a Daimler spokesman in New York, said Ernst Lieb “has been relieved of his duties as CEO of Mercedes-Benz USA effective immediately. Daily business operations of MBUSA will be conducted by Herbert Werner — CFO and Vice President Finance, Controlling & IT — until further notice.”

Tjan said the company would have no further comment on why Lieb was being removed, reported The Detroit News.

Lieb, 56, has headed the U.S. unit of the German automaker since September 2006.

Lieb was previously president and CEO of then-DaimlerChrysler Australia/Pacific and president and CEO of Mercedes-Benz Canada in 1995.

This month, Mercedes-Benz USA, based in Montvale, N.J., reported its highest ever September sales, selling 23,897 vehicles — a 15.6 percent jump over a year ago.

In the first nine months of 2011, Mercedes-Benz has sold 183,711 vehicles — an 11.1 percent increase over the same period last year.

In August, Lieb told reporters he predicted Mercedes-Benz would be the U.S.’s best-selling luxury brand, outselling BMW in 2011. Mercedes-Benz has held about a 5,000-vehicle lead over its German rival.

Lieb said in February the company is spending $1.4 billion to help 300 of its 353 dealerships renovate their facilities. It also brought all its dealers to Germany in April to show them the company’s future product plans.

Earlier this month, Lieb was in New Orleans to announce the company’s 10-year deal for naming rights for the Superdome, where the New Orleans Saints play. The deal, according to the Times-Picayune, is reportedly worth between $50 million and $60 million.

Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz unit is issuing its second recall in the last two year to address leaking fuel filters in diesel vehicles.

The company said in documents posted on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that it is recalling 6,872 vehicles, according to The Detroit News.

The new recall includes diesel versions of the 2011 E-Class, 2012 S-Class, 2011 R-Class, 2011 ML-Class and 2011 GL-Class.

The diesel fuel filter has an a seal that can leak around the heating component.

In October, Daimler recalled 2,297 2011 diesel vehicles for the same problem. Daimler made a change in the production process in June after it received a number of field reports in Europe of leaking fuel.

But after the recall, Daimler continued to receive a number of further complaints – and made another production change.

The recall will begin next month and dealers will replace the diesel fuel filter if necessary. The company estimates less than 1 percent of recalled vehicles will need to be fixed.

Daimler AG’s chief executive called the sputtering U.S. economic recovery the largest potential risk to the auto industry’s strong outlook this year even as the luxury car maker expects to generate more of its profit and sales from China and other emerging markets.

Though fast-growing demand in emerging markets could propel auto industry sales to expand between 5 percent and 7 percent annually for some years to come, “the biggest risk is that the U.S. economy does not start [recovering] on a more consistent basis,” Daimler Chief Executive Dieter Zetsche said in an interview.

The European debt crisis posed another threat and preserving and strengthening the euro-zone and its common currency was key to stable European economic growth, he said.

As European political leaders continue to wrangle over a new aid package for Greece, Mr. Zetsche was one of 50 chief executives of major German and French corporations that signed and published an open letter Tuesday in newspaper ads in Germany and France with the headline, “The euro is necessary.”

In the full-page newspaper ad, the chief executives decried “populist demands”—particularly in Germany—that Greece or other countries be forced to quit the euro or split the euro zone in two, while calling for strengthening the rules that govern the euro.

Speaking separately, Mr. Zetsche warned that if moves to rescue Greece faltered, it could hit the financing sector in Europe and beyond, reported The Wall Street Journal. “We believe it is necessary to fight for the continuation of the euro and almost everything that helps in this regard,” he said.

Despite Mr. Zetsche’s caution about the U.S. and Europe, Daimler, like other German premium auto makers, earns an increasing share of its profit from emerging markets, especially China, where the Stuttgart, Germany, company is currently opening a new Mercedes-Benz dealership every week to keep up with booming demand.

Through May of this year, sales of Mercedes vehicles are up 62 percent in China compared to a year ago, versus a worldwide increase of 10.5 percent. The car maker already sold more of its high-end S-Class models to Chinese buyers last year than in the U.S. and Germany combined. Mr. Zetsche added that by 2015, China will have surpassed both countries as Mercedes’s largest market.

“It’s clear that [the industry's] center of gravity has shifted,” he said. Daimler also is shifting more production to China of its mid-range E-Class and C-Class models. Next year, roughly two-thirds of those car sales in China will be built locally, compared to just one-third in 2010. Mr. Zetsche said Daimler will continue to strictly export the larger, and more profitable, S-Class to China, in part because of the cachet that imports continue to have among Chinese luxury-car buyers.

Despite concerns the Chinese auto market may cool due to inflation and increasing anti-congestion measures, such as car registration restrictions, Mr. Zetsche predicted steady Chinese growth in premium car sales and said that so far Chinese government authorities had proven to be “masters” at keeping the economy from overheating.