Swedish truck maker Scania posted an unexpected net loss and said that market conditions will continue to be cruel.

Scania AB, Sweden’s second-largest truckmaker, posted a net loss of 150 million kronor ($20 million), after a net profit of 3.04 billion kronor last year.

The market did not expect the loss and the company’s stock plunged on the Stockholm stock exchange. According to a poll by Dow Jones and FactSet analysts had forecast a net profit of 222 million kronor.

Evli Bank analyst Michael Andersson told Dow Jones Newsires that analysts "maybe... were a bit too optimistic because of the good first quarter."

"There's still too many new trucks out in Europe," he said. "For sure, there won't be a European recovery this year. The question is what will happen next year? If there is a bounce back then I'm afraid it will be very small."

Revenue knocked down 40 percent to 14.43 billion kronor, also below analysts' forecast, while Scania's orders for trucks and buses fell 52 percent to 8,223 vehicles from a year earlier.

“Practically all markets where Scania has operations are characterised by continued low economic activity, which has led to weak demand for transport equipment”, Leif Östling, Scania’s President and CEO, said in a comment.

The company also said that the gloomy situation on the market is not likely to pass in the near term as the global downturn and tighter credit spawned by the financial crisis will continue to hold the market in its grip.

"During the seasonally weak third quarter, Scania foresees a continued low level of demand," the company said in the statement.

Faced with the worst slump in years, Scania has cut costs like may automakers. In May, it introduced a four-day work week for about 12,000 employees in Sweden, reducing their pay by 10 percent.

It had some 32,600 employees at end-June, with nearly 4,000 having left the company since September 2008.

Tuesday Sweden's Volvo Group, the world's second-largest truck maker by sales, posted deeper-than-expected second-quarter operating loss but rose in the stock exchange as analysts said the company’s “worst bleeding has been stopped”.