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Shareholders' meeting decides to increase dividend to DM 1.80 per unit share

06/30/1999

The Shareholders' Meeting of Dürr Aktiengesellschaft, Stuttgart, has today decided to pay a dividend of 1.80 DM per share (preceding year: 1.50 DM). Given a net profit for the year of 42.5 m DM (preceding year: 40.8 m DM) the total dividend amount is thus 23.4 m DM. Contracts handled abroad contributed significantly to the earnings achieved. So there is no tax credit for shareholders in Germany who are entitled to a tax deduction.

Furthermore, the shareholders elected Prof. Dr. Norbert Loos, Managing Partner of BW Kapitalbeteiligung GmbH, and Dr. Heinz-Gerd Stein, Member of the Board of Management of Thyssen Krupp AG as new members to the Supervisory Board. Dr. Jörg Kees and Reinhart Schmidt have resigned from their office with effect from the end of the meeting.

The shareholders' meeting also agreed to the resolution of converting the capital stock and other DM-amounts in the by-laws to euros, and to increase the capital stock with corporate funds to round up the euro amounts.

• Two new members elected to the Supervisory Board
• Plan figures for the first six months of 1999 achieved
• Confidence for the overall year 1999
• Service provider Premier opens up new growth opportunities

As already reported, Group sales in the first four months of 1999 stood at 391 m DM, incoming orders at 565 m DM. Order backlogs were at 1,907 m DM. Earnings before taxes amounted to 9.2 m DM. Dürr made qualitative statements on the development of the first six months of 1999. Compared with the preceding year, sales and earnings are still slightly behind; incoming orders were somewhat more behind compared with year-earlier figures, which were exceptionally high due to one big contract. Dürr has achieved half of the annual target figures in the first six months of 1999 for incoming orders, so the development is according to plan. In the USA, for in-stance, Dürr is working on engineering contracts, for which the respective systems contracts are expected before the end of this year.

For the overall year 1999, the company is confident, in spite of the continu-ing crises in Asia and South America, as several international automobile manufacturers have announced that projects having been temporarily shelved will be continued. "In spite of very diverse background conditions, Dürr will therefore pursue its rather demanding target for the business year 1999 to achieve the high levels of the preceding year with respect to incoming orders, sales and earnings", as Hans Dieter Pötsch, Chairman of the Board of Management of Dürr AG puts it.

Dürr sees good prospects for its youngest business unit, the service sector. Since the acquisition of Premier Manufacturing Support Services, Cincinnati (USA) in April, a leading international provider of special services for the automobile industry now belongs to the Dürr Group. Premier services are the logical supplement to Dürr's portfolio of systems, as apart from supplying the equipment, Dürr can now provide support services while production is running. On a medium-term basis, Dürr wants to achieve 20% of Group sales in the growing services market.

Dürr Ecoclean as well as the Conveyor Systems and Environmental Systems business units had extended their range of systems in 1998 and in 1999, thus preparing the way for further growth.