Engineering

06| 06 07
Today I am reporting to you on the past fiscal year of your Company for the first time. As you know,
I succeeded Ekkehard Schulz as Chairman of the Executive Board after the Annual General Meeting in
January 2011. It did not take long for me to regard ThyssenKrupp as “my” company – just like our 180,000
employees around the world. The Group’s management team and workforce performed well in 2010/2011.
You can find out about this in detail in our Annual Report and our new ThyssenKrupp Yearbook.
Business performance: Solid at operating level
Our operating performance in the reporting year was solid. We were able to leverage two key factors: the
initially still strong economic situation in our markets, and our internal efficiency and structural enhancement
programs. As a result we met our ambitious targets for 2010/2011, despite the increased uncertainty in
some customer sectors at the end of the year: Order intake and sales grew at double-digit rates. Order intake
was €50 billion, and sales €49 billion. Our operating earnings are also impressive: excluding special items,
adjusted EBIT was 42% higher at €1.8 billion, which was – just – within the forecast target corridor.
Strategic development program: Systematically initiated
We have good reason to be confident about the future of the Group. Our strong technological capabilities
open up good opportunities for us in the markets of the future. But limited financial resources mean we
cannot invest appropriately in all businesses to utilize these opportunities. The Executive Board analyzed the
situation in detail, carefully weighed up the options, and together with the management boards of the
business areas defined the core elements of our Strategic Way Forward. I am very pleased that these
decisions were also made with the agreement of the employee representatives.
– We will focus our portfolio further in the future. Our strengths are in providing intelligent solutions, above
all for efficient infrastructure and resource use; in many of these areas we are already best in class or
have the potential to become best in class.
– We will divest activities that we cannot develop appropriately in the Group. This will affect total sales of
€10 billion and around 35,000 employees. The separation of Stainless Global is a key element of this
portfolio optimization. However, we will only sell our businesses to “best owners” who can provide good
future prospects.
– Step-by-step reduction of our net financial debt will give us room for future investment – in our core
businesses, in new products and processes, in research and development, in our employees. All
investments will be based on clear criteria – growth, profitability and capital efficiency.
– While investments in recent years were concentrated mainly in the Materials area with our new steel
making and processing plants in Brazil and the USA, in the future we will be investing more strongly in
Technologies. We will be targeting emerging markets such as China and India that offer attractive growth
opportunities, whereas in the past our activities were mainly focused on Europe and the NAFTA region.
– The corporate program “impact” will support our strategic development and help us reach a higher
performance level.