S&T AG: Dividend rises 30% to EUR 0.13 per share
- Confirmed: EBITDA targeted for 2018 of more than EUR 80 million
- Revenues to rise by 2023 to EUR 2 billion; EBITDA to more than EUR 200 million
Linz, June 4, 2018. The shareholders of S&T AG (www.snt.at) today resolved at their Annual General Meeting, to increase the company's dividend by 30% on y-on-y basis (2017: EUR 0.10) to EUR 0.13 per share. The anew raising of the dividend was attributable to the good results achieved by the company in 2017, which was a year of records for S&T. In 2017 the company had revenues of EUR 882.0 million (2016: EUR 503.7 million). S&T very nearly doubled its operative earnings before depreciation (EBITDA) with EUR 68.1 million in 2017 (2016: EUR 34.4 million).
Financial year 2018's first quarter was highly successful and operated to the complete satisfaction of the Executive Board and its Chairman Hannes Niederhauser. During his speech, Mr. Niederhauser emphasized on the potential for further growth by the S&T Group possessed by Industrial 4.0 technologies: “We are continuing to entirely focus our activities upon what have become our core markets of IoT and Industry 4.0. These are now growing at annual rates of some 16% and we are participating in the rapid growth. We are going to set forth our investments in developing these technologies and will deploy our financial power to strengthen S&T's positioning of being at the cutting edge on these markets. In this respect we envision making further takeovers of companies that are active in the software sector.”
Confirmation of the forecasts made for 2018 and 2023
Financial year 2018 has gotten off to a great start. This is causing the Executive Board to confirm its positive forecasts for the financial year as a whole. S&T plans to achieve in 2018 - in a first for the company - revenues of some EUR 1 billion. This increase is to be outpaced by that of profitability, with EBITDA to come to at least EUR 80 million. S&T's growth is set to maintain its rate of strong growth in the years to come. The company plans to double its revenues over the next five years (by 2023) to EUR 2 billion with a disproportionately strong growth in profitability of at least EUR 200 million EBITDA.
Dr. Erhard Grossnigg remains Chairman of Supervisory Board
The Annual General Meeting voted Dr. Erhard Grossnigg, who had been the Chairman of the Supervisory Board, and Mag. Bernhard Chwatal, to remain members of this body. In the meeting of the Supervisory Board convened following the Annual General Meeting, Dr. Grossnigg was confirmed in his mandate as Chairman of the Supervisory Board and Mag. Chwatal as his deputy.
The proposals designed to stockpile capital through the creation of new authorized and conditional capitals were withdrawn by the Executive Board and by the Supervisory Board due to shareholder's feedback. These proposals were thus not voted on. This was due to there being some EUR 9.3 million in authorized capital, to the large amount of liquidity possessed by the company, and to the extant lines of credits' not having been fully exploited. These three resources provide the S&T Group with productive ways of implementing its growth strategy.
Some 52% of the share capital was represented at the 19th Annual General Meeting of S&T AG. The paying out of the dividend will be undertaken on June 11, 2018 - in the form of the issuance of a credit balance to those banks that maintain shareholders' accounts of securities deposit. For purposes of the reporting of Austria's income taxes, the dividends constitute a repayment of equity, as foreseen in § 4 Paragraph 12 of Austria's Income Tax Act.
The details of the proceedings of the Annual General Meeting of S&T AG and of the results of its votes can be found in the Investor Relations section of www.snt.at (S&T AG's Website).