Investor Relations

Capital market and the performance of the Salzgitter stock

Sources: Xetra closing prices DBAG, Datastream STEELEU

In the first quarter of 2008, the nervousness of the stock markets, triggered by the subprime mortgage crisis, was palpable. The speculations of a French bank, which ran into the billions, combined with unfavorable economic data from the USA, reinforced poor sentiment, which resulted in plummeting prices on international stock exchanges in January. While the DAX and MDAX were very volatile, but remained virtually unchanged overall in the month of February, both indices tumbled again in March. As against year-end 2007, the DAX lost 19 % and the MDAX 11 %.

The negative trend on the world’s stock exchanges at the start of the year naturally also affected the Salzgitter share. The share price fell initially to € 80.51 on January 22 and subsequently rallied strongly in the course of February, despite very volatile markets. A preliminary high for the year of € 124.50 was reached on February 27. Irrespective of the release of outstanding key data for the financial year 2007 on March 6, the Salzgitter share was again unable to decouple from the renewed general downtrend which set in towards the end of the quarter. The first quarter recorded a closing price of € 110.19, which corresponds to an increase of 8 % as against year-end 2007 (€ 102.05). The performance of the Salzgitter share thereby matched the level of the European steel index and notably exceeded that of the DAX and the MDAX.

The average daily turnover on German stock exchanges settled at an unusually high level of around 810,000 in the first quarter of 2008. The total number of Salzgitter shares traded in the first three months came to 50 million. With this high turnover, the company defended its top position in the MDAX ranking of Deutsche Börse, measured by share turnover in the last 12 months. Free float market capitalization on March 31, 2008, stood at almost € 4.5 billion, which secured third place in the MDAX ranking in this category.

In the course of the first quarter, Salzgitter AG presented itself at two investor conferences in Frankfurt and New York as part of its capital market communication activities. In addition, analysts and investors visited various Group companies in Salzgitter, Mülheim, Düsseldorf and Dortmund. After the release of the Annual Report 2007, the annual financial statements were presented and discussed intensively at well attended analyst conferences in Frankfurt and London. The investor relations work of Salzgitter AG was rewarded by readers of the Börse Online magazine and took third place in the MidCap category of the BIRD 2007 (“Beste Investor Relations Deutschland") competition.

Since the beginning of the financial year, a total of 67 company reports and recommendations on the Salzgitter share have been published by 26 banks, along with financial publications with the following current ratings (as per March 31, 2008): 21 buy/outperform, 3 hold/neutral, 2 sell/underperform.

Treasury Shares

As per March 31, 2007, Salzgitter AG held 6,321,820 treasury shares. In comparison with the portfolio status as per December 31, 2007 (6,321,823 units), the number of shares had decreased by 3 units. These were granted to members of the workforce as a bonus.

Information for investors

1) All data based on prices from XETRA trading 2) Calculated on the basis of the respective closing price at the end of the period multiplied by the number of shares outstanding per this date