Group’s first-quarter earnings before major nonrecurring items €715 million / Order intake and sales level with prior-year quarter
ThyssenKrupp performed in line with expectations in the 1st quarter 2007/2008. Order intake and sales reached the high levels of the prior-year quarter. The Group’s earnings before taxes amounted to €646 million. Before major nonrecurring items EBT was €715 million. Profits were therefore higher than planned but, as expected, lower than a year earlier. The prior-year quarter was boosted by exceptionally strong demand and very high base prices for stainless steel, which were both absent in the reporting quarter in the Stainless and Services segments.

Executive Board Chairman Dr. Ekkehard Schulz: “For 2007/2008 we forecast earnings before taxes and major nonrecurring items, including project costs for the steel mills in Brazil and the USA, of over €3 billion. For our Steel segment we expect 2008 to be another good steel year. The signs for this on the market have been increasing recently. We also expect continued lively demand and a significant improvement in prices in the Stainless segment. Our Technologies segment has orders in hand of around €16 billion which will provide high earnings quality for some years to come. At Elevator we expect earnings to remain solid among other things on account of the business’s high share of services. And in the Services segment we are profiting from good demand and increasing prices for materials and services in particular as a result of infrastructure building in the growth regions of the world. As things stand at present, we expect sales of €53 billion in the current fiscal year.”

The mid-term sales target for ThyssenKrupp is €60 billion, while the mid-term goal for sustainable earnings before taxes and major nonrecurring items is €4 billion. In the longer term, especially after the startup of the steel mills of Steel and Stainless in North America and the investments of the other segments in other regions, ThyssenKrupp aims to achieve sales of around €65 billion and earnings before taxes and major nonrecurring items of €4.5 to 5.0 billion.

The highlights for the 1st quarter 2007/2008 were as follows:
Order intake, as in the prior-year quarter, was €13.3 billion.
Sales were €12.3 billion, again as in the prior-year quarter.
EBITDA was €1,083 million, compared with €1,507 million in the prior year.
Earnings before taxes reached €646 million, compared with €1,062 million in the prior-year quarter.
Earnings per share came to €0.85, compared with €1.31 in the prior-year quarter.
Net financial liabilities at December 31, 2007 were €859 million - an increase of €1,082 million compared with September 30, 2007, when net financial receivables of €223 million were reported. The increase in the 1st quarter is thus roughly the same as the change in the prior-year quarter, when there was an increase of €1,138 million.
Online and downloadable versions of the full interim report are available in German and English at http://www.thyssenkrupp.com.

With sales of 51.7 billion euros and 191,350 employees in over 70 countries, ThyssenKrupp is one of the world's major technology groups and occupies excellent positions on the international markets. The three main business areas of steel, capital goods and services, organized in five segments - Steel, Stainless, Technologies, Elevator and Services - mark out the Group's areas of competence.

Contact:

Dr. Jürgen Claassen
Communications and Strategy
ThyssenKrupp AG
Phone: +49 (211) 824-36002
Fax: +49 (211) 824-36005
E-mail: press@thyssenkrupp.com
Internet: www.thyssenkrupp.com