HELLA Annual General Meeting 2021: Shareholders approve dividend payment of € 0.96 per share

Lippstadt, 30 September 2021. HELLA GmbH & Co. KGaA today held its Annual General Meeting for the 2020/2021 fiscal year. Due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, this year's Annual General Meeting was again held as a purely virtual event with no physical presence of shareholders or shareholder representatives. A total of around 170 shareholders and guests followed the Annual General Meeting online. At the time of the vote, approximately 80 percent of the voting share capital was represented.

The Annual General Meeting followed the Management Board's proposal and agreed on a dividend payment of € 0.96 per share for the past fiscal year 2020/2021. The total amount to be distributed to the shareholders thus amounts to € 107 million. In addition, the Annual General Meeting approved all other items on the agenda and expressed its confidence in the Management Board, the Shareholder Committee and the Supervisory Board with large majorities.

In his speech, HELLA CEO Dr. Rolf Breidenbach thanked in particular the more than 36,000 HELLA employees worldwide: "It was a challenging year. But it was also a successful one." For example, in the fiscal year 2020/2021 (1 June 2020 to 31 May 2021), HELLA increased its consolidated sales adjusted for exchange rate and portfolio effects by 13.3 percent to € 6.5 billion (prior year: € 5.8 billion) and thus once again significantly outperformed the global automotive market. At the same time, the adjusted earnings before interest and taxes (adjusted EBIT) more than doubled to € 510 million (prior year: € 227 million); the adjusted EBIT margin was 8.0 percent (prior year: 4.0 percent).

"Our results speak a clear language: HELLA is well positioned. We have a solid and strong foundation consisting of our employees, our technologies, our financial strength. We're going to need it. Because the challenges are by no means getting smaller," said Dr. Rolf Breidenbach in his speech. With regard to the announced merger with Faurecia, he continued: "Faurecia and HELLA are strong companies. They are healthy and profitable; they both have strong technological expertise and long-term focus. We are even stronger together." Against this background, he assumes that the Management Board will recommend the acceptance of the public takeover offer subject to the currently ongoing review of the offer document.

Detailed information on this year's Annual General Meeting and the respective voting results will be published on the HELLA website in the section Investor Relations.