The dividend is now to be increased significantly compared to the previous year from EUR 0.5 to EUR 1.2 per share. In view of the Ukraine war, however, market sentiment clouded over at the beginning of the 2022/23 financial year.
In the past fiscal year, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) doubled to EUR 2.3 billion. This value is unlikely to be maintained this year given the uncertain global environment, including supply chain problems. The management expects an EBITDA of 1.8 to 2 billion euros for 2022/23, although the further development in the second half of the financial year is not yet foreseeable. Keyword energy prices or EU concerted exit from Russian oil and gas.
The EBITDA margin improved from 10.5 to 15.4 percent in 2021/22. Earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) tripled year-on-year from EUR 338.2 million to almost EUR 1.5 billion. The EBIT margin increased from 3.1 to 9.7 percent.
Despite a challenging environment, which was characterized by the global COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain problems, massive increases in raw material and energy prices and most recently by the effects of the Russia-Ukraine war, voestalpine as of March 31, 2022 “both in terms of sales and completed the most successful financial year in the history of the group in terms of earnings,” the group announced. Sales increased in 2021/22 by almost 37 percent from 10.9 to 14.9 billion euros. The bottom line was a surplus (EPS) per share of EUR 7.28 (previous year: EUR 0.24).
With such rosy results it should be over for the time being. The outbreak of the Ukraine war with the resulting sanctions against Russia since February abruptly ended the strong recovery momentum in economic development after the end of the pandemic-related restrictions. This slowed down economic development in Europe again. In North America, too, economic growth unexpectedly slowed down somewhat in the last quarter of the 2021/22 financial year. The zero-COVID strategy in China not only reduces economic momentum in their own country, but also means that consequences in Europe and North America can be expected due to the close interdependence of the global value chains.
voestalpine employed 50,225 people worldwide (2020/21: 48,654).
Source: Nachrichten
