Download - Salzgitter AG

Shareholder Structure
Free float 64.8%
Salzgitter AG 10.0%
Federal State of 25.2%
Lower Saxony
Institutional 7.0%
investors –
Germany
Institutional 7.0%
investors –
rest of Europe
Institutional 9.1%
investors – UK
+ Ireland
Institutional 17.0%
investors – USA
Institutional 1.7%
investors –
other regions
Other 23.0%
shareholders
Status: 12/2007
A Group Management Report and Management Report on Salzgitter AG I. Business and the Environment 74 75
correction in March which took place after the crash on the Chinese stock market, the Salzgitter share
reached a new all-time peak listing of € 158.90 on July 13, 2007. The advent of the subprime mortgage
crisis put an end to this long-term trend. Up to the end of October, the share price fluctuated
strongly in a bandwidth between € 130 and € 150. Information has it that especially institutional
investors that had suffered losses from investments of a different kind and wanted to compensate for
these losses sold equities which had performed very well up until then, such as the Salzgitter share. In
the last months of 2007, MDAX equities in general came under a great deal of pressure from institutional
investors selling European midcap shares. The announced takeover of the mining group Rio
Tinto by BHP Billiton, a competitor company, placed additional pressure on all steel equities, as this
oligopolization was expected to result in rising prices for raw materials. The publishing of the outstanding
nine-monthly results of Salzgitter AG on November 14, with a confident outlook for the steel
and tubes industry, the subsequent confirmation of buy recommendations of a number of renowned
analyst houses, as well as intensified investor relations communication activities of our company were
unable to call to mind the fundamental data and bring about a sustained recovery in the share price at
the end of the year. To summarize: the price decline of our share during the second half is not due to
the operating performance of our company, but to general fears about the economy and the divestment
of shares to compensate for losses incurred elsewhere.
The number of Salzgitter shares traded on German stock exchanges averaged just under 474,000
per day, which is 8% lower than the previous year’s figure (2006: 510,000 units/day). All in all, the
year saw 120 million shares of Salzgitter AG change hands on the German stock exchanges (2006:
130 million units). The share of transactions carried out via electronic trading in XETRA and floor trading
in Frankfurt (98.2%) rose marginally again in comparison with the previous year (97.8%).
Measured in terms of the volume of shares traded, which came to more than € 14.3 billion,
Salzgitter AG took first place in the MDAX list of Deutsche Börse at the end of December. After a temporary
rise to second place, our free float market capitalization of € 4.26 billion as per December 31, 2007,
attained fifth place in this category, as in the year before. This valuation places Salzgitter AG among
Germany’s top 35 listed companies, and it remains among the group of aspiring DAX candidates.
According to a survey commissioned in December, the shareholder
structure of Salzgitter AG had changed only marginally at year-end
2007 as against the previous year-end. Shareholders registered in
Germany, including the major shareholders of the Federal State of
Lower Saxony and Salzgitter AG itself, held 42.2%. The share of
domestic institutional investors fell by 1.4% to 7.0% in the
course of the year as opposed to that of foreign investors, which
climbed to 34.8%. A total of 23% of investors could not be identified,
but are most likely accounted for by private domestic and
foreign investors, as well as institutional investors with no reporting
requirements, such as insurance companies and trust foundations.
Given the extremely high turnover on the stock exchange during the
fourth quarter, in conjuction with the fact that, as experience has shown,
the up-to-dateness of relevant data varies, this shareholder analysis is,
however, of limited informative value. The free float of the Salzgitter share stood unchanged at 64.8%
as per December 31, 2007.
Business and
the Environment