The current strong performance of the Company and the capacity of voestalpine Group for achieving sustained, high levels of cash flow, permit the Company to carry out this share repurchase. The purpose of the repurchase of the Company’s own shares is to facilitate servicing the employee participation and stock option programs of the voestalpine Group as well as to facilitate servicing of the convertible bonds issued by voestalpine AG on July 15, 2005.
voestalpine AG does, however, also reserve the right to utilize the repurchased shares for other purposes, for example for supporting the Group’s growth strategy, or, where appropriate, to retire the shares.
voestalpine AG furthermore also reserves the option of conducting a repurchase of a portion of the convertible bonds in addition to its repurchase of voestalpine shares.
For details of the repurchase program, please see the referring site in the Investor Relations area of our web site. All of the transactions are also published there weekly after they are carried out.