Shareholders approve proposed dividend
Hamburg, July 6, 2010 – At the ordinary Annual General Meeting on 2 July 2010, the shareholders of KTG Agrar AG (ISIN: DE000A0DN1J4) approved the proposed dividend of EUR 0.10 per share. “This is the first step towards a sustainable dividend policy,” said Siegfried Hofreiter, CEO of KTG Agrar. He reported to the more than 150 shareholders on the successful year 2009, in which the total output increased by 24 percent and the net profit by as much as 30 percent. The outlook is also positive; the company plans to continue its expansion and to grow in all segments.
KTG Agrar will continue to focus on its three core competencies – organic farming, conventional farming and biogas production – and plans to expand its farmland in east Germany and Lithuania. The company currently manages more than 30,000 hectares, of which about 6,000 hectares are owned by KTG Agrar. “Farmland is a scarce resource and land prices will continue to rise in future. We want to benefit from this trend,” says Siegfried Hofreiter. Due to the fact that market prices are much higher than the purchase prices, there are undisclosed reserves of more than EUR 10 million in KTG’s balance sheet.
In the coming years, growth will be driven by the biogas segment, which is characterised by an EBIT margin in excess of 20 percent, which is above the Group average, as well as by very reliable cash flows. “Our current production capacity of 11 MW is sufficient to produce clean energy for some 20,000 households,” said Dr. Thomas Berger, Management Board member in charge of the biogas segment. “We want to double this output in the next two years.” Before the end of the year the capacity is to be expanded to over 14 MW.
The shareholders at the Annual General Meeting in Hamburg were very pleased with the company’s performance in 2009 and the excellent outlook. More than 99 percent of them approved the acts of the Management Board and the Supervisory Board.
About KTG Agrar:
With cultivable land of more than 30,000 hectares, KTG Agrar AG is one of the leading producers of agricultural commodities in Europe. The Hamburg-based company’s core area of expertise is the organic and traditional cultivation of market products such as cereals, maize and rapeseed. For organic market products KTG Agrar is the european market leader. The company mainly produces in Germany but has also operated production in the EU full member state of Lithuania since 2005. The third mainstay the production of bioenergy. At present, KTG Agrar operates biogas plants with a total capacity of around eleven megawatts. In the year 2009, KTG achieved a total output of EUR 59,7 million and EBIT of EUR 9.2 million. Since November 2007 the company is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and currently mote than 200 employees. Further information can be found at www.ktg.ag.
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Fabian Lorenz
IR.on AG
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