EANS-News: The Salzgitter Group masters the challenges of the financial crisis with assuredness

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Financial Figures/Balance Sheet/Key data

Salzgitter (euro adhoc) - 2009 will go down as one of the most
difficult financial years in the 150-year history of the Salzgitter
Group. During the first nine months the Group had to absorb a
dramatic slump in demand for rolled steel products, among other
occurrences. Thanks, on the one hand, to the sound and broad business
base and the healthy financial position of the company and, on the
other, to a program of swiftly implemented urgent measures to
stabilize performance, all the challenges posed by the crisis were
mastered with aplomb. With the onset of economic recovery, the Group
was again generating a positive operating profit in the fourth
quarter.

External sales by Division (EUR million):

FY 2009 (FY 2008)
Steel 1,673.6 (3,001.7)
Trading 3,038.7 (5,621.7)
Tubes 2,044.6 (2,172.5)
Services 302.9 (519.3)
Technology 717.6 (1.037.9)
Other 40.6 (146.0)
Group 7,818.0 (12,499.2)

Earnings before tax by Division (EUR million):

FY 2009 (FY 2008)
Steel -373.5 (545.6)
Trading -128.0 (150.8)
Tubes 104.0 (311.8)
Services 8.2 (23.9)
Technology -210.4 (3.8)
Other/Consolidation 103.3 (-32.5)
Group -496.5 (1,003.4)

As the tail-end effects of the financial crisis are still being felt
in the current year and cause jitteriness in the relevant sales and
procurement markets, providing a reliable, quantified outlook for
sales and the result of the Salzgitter Group is naturally not
possible. It is, however, foreseeable that there will be an
improvement in the economic situation of most of the Group companies.
The recovery of these steel companies, which depends on capacity
utilization, should be able to partly compensate for a selling
price-induced lower result in the Tubes Division. We therefore expect
our Group to generate a positive pre-tax result in the double-digit
million Euro range. There are nonetheless considerable risks, as
before: alongside the foreseeable increase in the cost of raw
materials, the recovery of the steel and mechanical engineering
markets is still subject to uncertainties.

As in recent years, we make reference to the fact that opportunities
and risks from currently unforeseeable trends in selling prices,
input materials and capacity level developments, as well as changes
in the currency parity, may considerably affect performance in the
course of the financial year 2010. The resulting fluctuation in the
consolidated pre-tax result may, as current events show, be within a
considerable range, either to the positive or to the negative. The
dimensions of this range become clear if one considers that, with
around 10 million tons of steel products sold by the Steel, Trading
and Tubes divisions, an average EUR 50 contraction in the margin per
ton is sufficient to cause a variation in the annual result of more
than EUR 500 million.

More information can be found in the full press release published
today (see www.salzgitter-ag.de).

end of announcement euro adhoc
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ots Originaltext: Salzgitter AG
Im Internet recherchierbar: http://www.presseportal.de

Further inquiry note:

Bernhard Kleinermann

Tel.: +49 (0) 5341 21-1852

e-mail: ir@salzgitter-ag.de

Branche: Iron & Steel
ISIN: DE0006202005
WKN: 620200
Index: DAX, Midcap Market Index, CDAX, Classic All Share, Prime All
Share
Börsen: Frankfurt / regulated dealing/prime standard
Berlin / free trade
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München / free trade
Hannover / regulated dealing