Second-highest dividend in the history of the company approved at Aurubis AG’s Annual General Meeting

Aurubis AG shareholders are profiting from the successful 2016/17 fiscal year. As proposed by the Supervisory Board and Executive Board, a dividend of € 1.45 per share was approved at the Annual General Meeting. This is an increase of 16 % compared to the previous year (€ 1.25) and, after that of fiscal year 2007/08 (€ 1.60), the second-highest dividend that Aurubis has ever paid out. Measured against the share’s closing price at the end of the fiscal year, the dividend yield is 2.1 %.

The share price also developed positively in the previous fiscal year: At the end of fiscal year 2015/16, it was at € 49.88 and ended the following fiscal year at € 68.54 on September 29, 2017. It thus increased by 37 % in the course of the year. In the subsequent quarters, the share price climbed to a new all-time high of € 86.80, but then declined again to the level of the beginning of fiscal year 2017/18. The share price was € 69.18 the evening before the Annual General Meeting.

All of the other proposals that were put to a vote were passed with the needed majority at the Annual General Meeting as well. 57.93 % of the share capital with voting rights was present.

Positive results and optimistic outlook

In the Executive Board’s report, Aurubis AG’s Supervisory Board Chairman Jürgen Schachler assessed the previous fiscal year altogether positively: “Our profitability – with an operating EBT of € 298 million – was noticeably higher than in the previous year.” As such, the result amounted to € 213 million. The return on capital employed (ROCE) increased to 15.1 % in 2016/17 (previous year: 10.9 %). “This is in line with our targets,” explained Jürgen Schachler.

In the first quarter of the current fiscal year, Aurubis was able to continue the good business performance. “We are off to a strong start in the new fiscal year, considering that the first quarter is normally weaker due to seasonal effects,” said Jürgen Schachler. “With an operational result of € 79 million, we carried over the momentum from the last fiscal year into the new.”

In addition, Jürgen Schachler explained the new strategy to the shareholders; the company had first introduced this when presenting the 2016/17 financial figures in December of last year. It is based on three focus areas: growth, efficiency and responsibility. In accordance with its Vision 2025, Aurubis will thereby continue to further develop into a multi-metal provider.

Schachler said that the “Future Complex Metallurgy” (FCM) project is a crucial project for internal growth, in support of the strategy, and cast a glance ahead:

With FCM, we will be able to expand our raw material base significantly. This represents the development of an innovative metallurgical process, which will generate a positive contribution to earnings of € 80 million (EBITDA) per year from fiscal year 2022/23 onwards.

The initiated full acquisition of Deutsche Giessdraht GmbH, which is subject to approval by the antitrust authorities, and the planned sale of the Flat Rolled Products segment to Wieland-Werke AG are, according to Schachler, a sign of the dedication with which the company is pursuing further development. “As you can see, we are in the middle of putting our strategy into practice!”

Fritz Vahrenholt elected as new Supervisory Board chairman

New elections for the Supervisory Board’s shareholder representatives were also held at Aurubis AG’s Annual General Meeting. At its constitutive meeting immediately following the Annual General Meeting, the supervisory body designated Prof. Dr. Fritz Vahrenholt as the new chairman of the Supervisory Board. The postdoctoral chemist served as Senator for the Environment in Hamburg and held a number of executive board positions at companies in the energy sector. He has been a member of the Supervisory Board at Aurubis AG since 1999.

In the post of Chairman of the Supervisory Board, he is succeeding Prof. Dr.-Ing. Heinz Jörg Fuhrmann, Executive Board Chairman at Salzgitter AG, who will remain a member of the supervisory body.

Furthermore, shareholders’ representatives for the new Supervisory Board were elected at the Annual General Meeting:

• Prof. Dr. Karl Friedrich Jakob, Executive Board Chairman, RWTÜV e.V.
• Dr. Stephan Krümmer, most recently Chairman of Corporate Finance (Germany), M&A division, member of the global “Executive Committee“ for M&A, Deloitte
• Dr. Sandra Reich, Director, NKI Institute for Responsible Investments GmbH, and
• Edna Schöne, Executive Board member at Euler Hermes AG.

The Aurubis AG employees had already elected the employees' representatives for the Supervisory Board in November 2017. These are:

• Karl-Heinz Hamacher, Works Council Chairman, Aurubis Stolberg
• Renate Hold-Yilmaz, Works Council Chairman, Aurubis Hamburg
• Jan Koltze, District Manager, IG BCE Hamburg
• Dr. Elke Lossin, Operations Manager of the analytical laboratory, Aurubis Hamburg
• Stefan Schmidt, Production Manager EMD/smelting operations, Aurubis Lünen, and
• Melf Singer, day shift foreman for acid plants, Aurubis Hamburg.

Renate Hold-Yilmaz was elected as Deputy Chairwoman of the Supervisory Board.