VARTA : Annual General Meeting resolves first-ever dividend payment worth € 2.48 per share

The Annual General Meeting of VARTA AG has resolved the first dividend payment in the Company's history. The dividend will amount to around € 100m, which equates to € 2.48 per share. Shareholders have therefore approved the proposal submitted by the Executive Board and Supervisory Board. Long-standing Supervisory Board members Frank Dieter Maier and Dr. Georg Blumauer will be stepping down from their roles, with Martin Ohneberg (93.3%) and Prof. Dr. Werner Tillmetz (95.0%) accordingly elected as their successors. The other members of the Supervisory Board, namely DDr. Michael Tojner, Sven Quandt, Dr. Harald Sommerer and Dr. Michael Pistauer, were re-elected for the next term of office.

The Annual General Meeting expressed its confidence in the Executive Board and Supervisory Board for fiscal year 2020 with a large majority and approved all items on the agenda, including the resolution on the approval of the remuneration system for members of the Executive Board, with a share of the vote of at least 89,0%. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Annual General Meeting took place as a virtual event, as was the case last year too, which shareholders were able to follow online. In the voting, around 26.1 million shares were represented, equating to a share of 64.7% of the share capital.

Dividend payments are a new phenomenon for the Ellwangen-based technology company. Further increased profitability and a low debt level have allowed VARTA AG to pay shareholders a dividend this year as well as, at the same time, making further large-scale investments in the Company's lithium-ion business. In this respect, a new lithium-ion battery factory is soon to be opened at the Nördlingen site, where in future the Company will have a total of 60,000 square meters of production space at its disposal. The pilot production line for new, large-format V4Drive rounded lithium-ion cells is set to go into operation on schedule at the end of this year. These ultra-high-performance cells are the subject of huge customer interest in the areas of Home&Garden and Automotive in particular.

Detailed information on voting records related to individual agenda items at the Annual General Meeting has been published at: www.varta-ag.com/hauptversammlung/.