In his speech, Klaus-Dieter Peters, Chairman of HHLA¡¯s Executive Board, emphasised: ¡°We continued to expand our market position in both container handling and container transport again last year. In view of the challenging economic and infrastructural environment, that is a considerable achievement. The company¡¯s performance is our reward for determinedly enhancing our mega-ship handling capacity and quality, and for consistently pursuing our intermodal strategy. At the same time, we took some major steps towards shaping the company¡¯s future. I am pleased to say that we once again generated a high level of earnings by industry standards, which enabled us to reduce our net debt.¡±
Following the shareholders¡¯ resolution, a dividend of € 0.45 per dividend-entitled Class A share will be distributed for the Port Logistics subgroup for the 2013 financial year. This puts the dividend € 0.20 below that of the previous year. In 2012, the total dividend payout included a one-off gain from the sale of Transfracht shares, which added around € 0.25 to the dividend for 2012. The dividend payout ratio is equivalent to 65.3 % of the Port Logistics subgroup¡¯s net profit for the year after minority interests. It is therefore at the upper end of the 50¨C70 % range set for the payout ratio, which forms the cornerstone of HHLA¡¯s long-term dividend policy. As a result, HHLA is distributing a total of € 31.5 million to holders of its dividend-entitled Class A shares.
The Annual General Meeting also approved a proposal to pay € 1.25 per Class S share for the unlisted Real Estate subgroup ¨C a total of € 3.4 million and thus 4.2 % more than in the previous year. All of the Class S shares are held by the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg.
The Annual General Meeting approved all of the other proposals made by the Supervisory Board and Executive Board with majorities of more than 99 %.
More than 800 shareholders and guests attended the Annual General Meeting of Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG (HHLA) on 19 June 2014 at CCH Congress Center Hamburg. This represented 82.3 % of the share capital (previous year: 81 %).