While the economic momentum at the start of the voestalpine Group’s business year 2018/19 was solid, the economic climate began to cloud over a bit in the second quarter, especially in the light of growing trade conflicts worldwide.

With an EBITDA of EUR 860.1 million and an EBIT of EUR 479.5 million, the preliminary figures of the voestalpine Group for the first half of the business year 2018/19 are below the expectations of the market. Against this backdrop and due to the fact that the assumption made in the last outlook that the negative earnings effects of the blast furnace repairs (amounting to around EUR 150 million) can largely be offset is unlikely to occur, the Management Board of voestalpine AG today adjusted the outlook for the business year 2018/19 and from today’s point of view expects an EBIT of just under EUR 1 billion.

In early December the world’s first fully-electric international single-seater category in motorsport, the ABB FIA Formula E Championship, starts what is now its fifth racing season and brings groundbreaking innovations for both fans and drivers. In addition to a more efficient race car, more teams, and new circuits during the 2018/19 season the 22 drivers will also be competing in the voestalpine European Races for the first time. This will offer the eleven Formula E teams the opportunity to fight for another prestigious award in a totally new competition category. In the contest to be named winner of the voestalpine European Races, action-packed high-speed manoeuvres are certain to be on the cards during the five European E-Prix in Rome, Paris, Berlin, Monaco and Bern. During the Formula E official pre-season test in Valencia, Spain, from October 16 - 19, the teams will be making their first public debut ahead of preparations for the start of the season.

It was just a few weeks ago that the Metal Engineering Division of the voestalpine Group bundled its competencies in rails, turnouts, and signaling technology under the Railway Systems brand, positioning itself as a global full-service provider for fully-digital railway lines. Now comes the merger of the other business segments within the division—wire, seamless tubes, and welding technology—under the Industrial Systems brand. As a consequence of this reorganization, the division’s Management Board team, led by Franz Kainersdorfer, has been expanded to include two long-term voestalpine managers: Dieter Fritz, formerly head of the Turnout Systems business segment, and Günter Neureiter, to date Head of Welding Consumables, are moving up to become members of the divisional Management Board. The Metal Engineering Division has its headquarters in Leoben-Donawitz, Austria.

Over the past days voestalpine has been able to secure an important partial victory with respect to the punitive US tariffs of 25 percent imposed on steel products which came into effect in June. Of a total of 4,300 applications for product tariff exemptions submitted by our Group and our customers, we have currently received replies from the US administration to 2,640 of them. Roughly 2,360 of these replies were positive, while 280 were negative. This is a further significant reduction in the economic risk that these tariffs represent to voestalpine—at maximum around three percent of Group revenue is directly affected.

voestalpine generated revenue of over one billion euros in the expanding Asian market during the past business year. Revenue in China alone is forecast to rise from its current level of over EUR 550 million to EUR 800 million by 2020. Now the Group is setting two further milestones on its path to achieving this growth: in the railway infrastructure sector an important step in expanding in the booming Chinese urban traffic sector has been taken with the founding of a further joint venture for the production of turnouts. In addition, recently automotive activities have been significantly extended with the startup of the second component plant in China.

Completing the general renovation of Blast Furnace A has brought the voestalpine Steel Division a further step towards increasing energy and resource efficiency at its steel production site in Linz. After a 111-day period for repairs, the furnace, in which two-thirds of the entire annual pig iron volume of five million tons is produced, today successfully restarted operations. At a total cost of around EUR 180 million, the so-called relining project involved completely replacing the extremely wear-resistant interior lining of the blast furnace, as well as modernizing all other facilities used in operating the blast furnace. At around the same time, interim repairs were carried out on one of the two blast furnaces in Leoben-Donawitz.

Faster trains, growing passenger numbers, and increased security requirements face rail operators with ever new challenges. The Metal Engineering Division of the voestalpine Group is already a global leader in high-quality rails, high-tech turnouts, and digital monitoring systems. Now the Group is bundling these competencies under the “Railway Systems” brand, becoming a worldwide provider of complete systems for railway infrastructures. The new segment covers around 7,000 employees at 70 production and sales locations on all five continents, who together generated revenue of EUR 1.4 billion during the past business year. With the global trend towards urbanization and the expansion of public transport networks, an average annual growth of almost three percent is forecast.

The Metal Forming Division of the voestalpine Group supplies the automotive industry with ultra high-strength lightweight and safety components from its more than 30 locations around the world. With yesterday’s opening of two new plants in the growing Mexican market, the division is consistently driving its global expansion in this customer segment. At the plant in Aguascalientes where construction started in 2016 after securing a major contract, production of highly complex body-in-white and structural parts has been recently ramped up to full capacity. Due to the high level of demand, capacity will be extended further by 2019. Production of sophisticated automtovie tubular assemblies at the plant in Zacatecas began successfully at the end of 2017.

At the start of the new reporting period, the voestalpine Group succeeded in maintaining not only the broad economic momentum that it built up in the course of the previous, record business year, but also the performance it achieved in the first quarter of the previous year by generating record revenue of just under EUR 3.5 billion in the first quarter of 2018/19 (April 1 to June 30, 2018). The economic momentum in Europe, China, and North America, which remains strong overall, has not been greatly affected by the increasingly protectionist tendencies in global trade. Yet the Brexit vote has started to have a dampening effect in Europe.

Lighter, stronger, faster. That has held true for 20 years of product innovations at voestalpine Automotive Components Linz GmbH. Today, this company in the Metal Forming Division of the voestalpine Group has 300 employees and generates revenue of EUR 170 million. It is the world’s largest production site and the global leader in the production of laser-welded high-tech blanks for the automotive industry. Demand for lightweight products from Linz is so high that EUR 16 million has recently been invested to expand the site.

Since the official groundbreaking ceremony in April 2018, preparations for the construction of the world’s most advanced special steel plant in Kapfenberg have been progressing rapidly. By awarding the contract for the electric arc furnace, the converter, and the secondary metallurgical systems—which represent the technological core of the plant—voestalpine has taken another important step in realizing the project. The SMS group, based in Düsseldorf, Germany, will be responsible for the engineering, process technology, and start-up of the fully automated melting system, which will begin production in 2021. The key partners for the subsequent process systems, such as the entire casting area, and for the construction of the hall will be commissioned in the next few months.

With respect to the press release issued today by the Bundeskartellamt, German federal cartel office, on the subject of the “Special steel cartel”, voestalpine AG confirms its involvement in the stated proceedings. The investigations of the Bundeskartellamt into this issue had already been made public back in November 2015, following searches conducted by the Bundeskartellamt on the premises of competitor companies. The Bundeskartellamt procedure was initiated subsequent to an application under the Leniency Notice submitted by voestalpine AG. As the principal witness, no fines were imposed on the voestalpine Group.

voestalpine AG closed the business year 2017/18 with new record figures for revenue and earnings. The technology and industrial goods group thus once again confirms its attractiveness as a profitable investment. At today’s 26th Annual General Meeting, a dividend of EUR 1.40 per (dividend-bearing) share was resolved for the business year 2017/18. The Annual General Meeting thus approved the proposal of the Management Board and the Supervisory Board. The current value represents an increase of no less than 27.3 percent over last year’s EUR 1.10 dividend. It is therefore the sixth year in a row that the company is paying out a higher dividend to its shareholders. The dividend will be transferred from Monday, July 16, 2018 (ex-dividend date: July 12, 2018).

Founded in 1668 as a family-run iron mill in Värmland, southern Sweden, today Uddeholms AB is a global market leader in the production of special steels for toolmaking. With sales sites and partners in over 90 countries, the company supplies the global automotive, mechanical engineering, and consumer goods industries with sophisticated steel grades from Hagfors. Uddeholms AB has a workforce of 900 employees at its headquarters and generated revenue of EUR 305 million in the past business year. Over the past ten years more than EUR 130 million has been invested at the site—intensive development of digitalization technologies and the production of metal powder for 3D printing will secure the future of this site with its long history.

By successfully focusing on advanced technologies and international markets, while simultaneously concentrating on consistent cost management and supported by strong economic momentum, the voestalpine Group achieved record-breaking figures for both revenue and earnings in the business year 2017/18 (April 1, 2017, to March 31, 2018).

At today’s Supervisory Board meeting of voestalpine AG, decisions were made as to the succession at the top of the technology and capital goods group: Chairman of the Management Board, Dr. Wolfgang Eder, will renew his contract, which runs until March 31, 2019, until July 3, 2019 (date of the Annual General Meeting of voestalpine AG) and subsequently step down from the Management Board. The Supervisory Board will recommend to the Annual General Meeting 2019 that it elect Eder to the Supervisory Board as the new shareholder representative. If elected, he could take over the chairmanship of the Supervisory Board from the long-reigning chairman, Dr. Joachim Lemppenau, after a two-year “cooling off period.”

Herbert Eibensteiner, Dipl.-Ing., is to become new chairman of the Management Board on July 3, 2019. Eibensteiner has served on the Management Board of voestalpine AG since 2012 and possesses broad experience in international corporate and Group management, not least as the head of two of the Group’s divisions. The contracts of the remaining Management Board team were renewed by another five years (April 1, 2019, through March 31, 2024).

Prior to the expiry of the temporary exemption, the US administration yesterday announced its final decision regarding steel imports from EU countries pursuant to Section 232. The punitive tariffs of 25 percent on steel products and 10 percent on aluminum products from European countries that were announced at the beginning of March come into force immediately.

Just two weeks after announcing its new role as the future main sponsor of the European ABB FIA Formula E races, voestalpine is represented at the E-Prix in Berlin today for the first time. voestalpine CEO Wolfgang Eder offered an initial overview of the activities which will accompany the “voestalpine European Season 2019”: the “voestalpine European Races”, the first fully-electric racing series, will be run over its spectacular downtown circuits in cities including Paris, Berlin, Rome, and Monte Carlo. For the ten teams and their drivers, who include former Formula One aces Nick Heidfeld and Felipe Massa, this is also the opportunity to win an additional trophy in the special voestalpine rankings.

voestalpine will be a partner to the ABB FIA Formula E Championship in its European races for an initial period of two years starting with the 2018/2019 season. Titled the “voestalpine European Races”, the world’s first electric street racing series will be run in European cities including Paris, Berlin, Rome, and Monte Carlo among others - pending publication of next season’s calendar. This takes voestalpine into a completely new sponsoring category, one with its own rankings and a trophy in the fifth (2018/19) and sixth (2019/20) seasons of Formula E.

Around half a year after announcing the location decision, today’s groundbreaking ceremony marked the official start of the three-year construction phase for the new voestalpine special steel plant in Kapfenberg, Austria. From 2021 onwards, each year the fully digitalized plant will produce around 205,000 tons of sophisticated high-performance steels, especially for the international aviation and automotive industries as well as for the oil & gas sector, while at the same time securing more than 3,000 highly skilled jobs in the region over the long term. Preparations for the major project with an investment volume of up to EUR 350 million are already fully underway: the construction site is currently being prepared, with work focusing on energy supply and logistics infrastructure.

The first stage of replacing the streetcar lines on Vienna’s Ringstrasse has recently concluded, and involved voestalpine premium quality rails and turnouts. Vienna’s public transport authority, Wiener Linien, is updating a total of around 2 kilometers of track infrastructure by summer 2018, from Schwarzenbergplatz past the State Opera, Parliament, and on to the University. As the global market leader in complete turnout systems and a top supplier of high-quality rails, around the world the Metal Engineering Division at voestalpine is seen as a reliable partner when it comes to realizing sophisticated rail infrastructure projects. In the business year 2016/17, with revenue of EUR 1.4 billion, the voestalpine railway segment generated around twelve percent of the Group’s revenue.

An EU-funded flagship project for a CO2-reduced energy future and the decarbonization of steel production is taking shape: today, at the voestalpine site in Linz, the H2FUTURE project consortium, consisting of voestalpine, Siemens, VERBUND, and Austrian Power Grid, together with the research partners K1-MET and ECN, officially gave the go-ahead for construction of the world’s largest pilot facility for the production of “green” hydrogen. With a capacity of 6 megawatts, this is the most effective and advanced plant of its type. The partners from industry and power generation will use this facility to research into future breakthrough technologies which are needed to meet global climate goals over the long-term. The plant is scheduled to be fully operational by spring 2019.

With an average annual growth of over three percent globally, the aerospace sector is taking off. In order to take advantage of this potential, an endowed chair has been established at the Graz University of Technology in cooperation with industry partners voestalpine, Fuchshofer Präzisionstechnik, TCM International, and Diamond Aircraft Industries. Since March this year, this position has been officially held by Brazilian-born materials scientist Sergio Amancio. The aim of this cooperation between science and business is to establish an international competence center for the development of pioneering materials and production technologies in the aerospace sector. voestalpine is the largest industrial partner and, with its high-performance materials and special forgings used in extremely high-load-bearing structural, engine, and undercarriage parts, is one of the world’s major suppliers to the aviation industry.

The US administration last night announced its decision regarding steel imports pursuant to Section 232, and confirmed the version already suggested by President Trump last Thursday which includes a general punitive tariff of 25 percent. Currently only the NAFTA partners Canada and Mexico are exempt, although other exemptions may follow.

The technology and capital goods group voestalpine is increasingly securing a key position in the dynamic and growing global electromobility industry. In addition to ultra high-strength yet ever lighter steel as a material for car bodies and battery housings, voestalpine is also revolutionizing the electromobility market with its innovative product solutions for electric motors. The most recent breakthrough has been achieved with the "compacore" process, in which state-of-the-art technologies are used to bond highest quality electrical steel into lamination stacks—the core element in every electric motor—to provide a sustained increase in motor efficiency. Demand amongst premium automotive customers is high: voestalpine has recently invested in a new serial production facility in Nagold, Germany, which is already scheduled to operate at full capacity through to 2021 to complete four orders worth a total of EUR 30 million.

The voestalpine Group’s performance in the first three quarters of the 2017/18 business year regarding both revenue and earnings is second to none against the backdrop of the strongest economic upturn in ten years.

Exactly two weeks before the start of the Olympic Winter Games 2018 in Pyeongchang, South Korea, the voestalpine Winter Games were celebrated for the first time at the Red Bull Ring over the weekend: 120 employees from over 40 countries and 90 Group companies met on January 26 and 27 to compete against one another in five winter sport disciplines. The focus of the event was on employee networking right across the Group. More than 50,000 people work for voestalpine around the world, with the employee participation plan making them the Group’s second-largest shareholder.

voestalpine has long been regarded as an environmental and efficiency benchmark in its industry, as well as a driver of innovation. Now the technology and capital goods group can complete another step towards realizing the H2FUTURE research project funded by the EU: the government of Upper Austria as the responsible EIA authority has recently authorized construction of the world’s largest pilot plant of its type for CO2-free production of hydrogen at the site in Linz. Together with five project partners, voestalpine is laying the foundations for further pioneering research into de-carbonizing the steel manufacturing process.

The Styrian production companies in the High Performance Metals Division of the voestalpine Group—up to now BÖHLER Edelstahl GmbH & Co KG, BÖHLER Schmiedetechnik GmbH & Co KG (both in Kapfenberg), and BÖHLER Bleche GmbH & Co KG (in Mürzzuschlag)—are to include the word “voestalpine” in their company names with immediate effect. Over the coming months their visual appearance will also be adapted to conform to the voestalpine brand image. This change stresses the Böhler companies’ position as part of the voestalpine Group, of which they have been a member for the past ten years, at the same time underlining their consistent focus on advanced technology and quality.