voestalpine continues to expand employee shareholding scheme—increase to 14.85%

Subject to the approval of the Supervisory Board, voestalpine AG's Management Board resolved on December 3, 2018 to exercise its power to increase the Company´s registered capital in accordance with § 4 (2b) of its Articles of Association by issuing 2,200,000 new bearer shares at no par value, thus increasing the registered capital by approximately 1.25%. The issue price was fixed at EUR 29.24 per share. The issue price of the shares corresponds to the closing average market price of the voestalpine share over the 5 trading days prior to the resolution of Management Board adopted on December 3, 2018.

The purpose of issuing the new shares is to further expand and safeguard voestalpine´s employee shareholding scheme. The subscription rights of all other shareholders are thus being excluded, and shares may be acquired only by voestalpine Mitarbeiterbeteiligung Privatstiftung, which shall hold the shares for the employees participating in the voestalpine employee shareholding scheme. This notice constitutes neither an offer for sale nor an invitation to submit an offer to purchase voestalpine AG securities. Upon completion of the capital increase, the company's capital stock will be EUR 324,391,840.99 and consist of 178,549,163 individual shares. The capital increase is scheduled for implementation by the end of March 2019.

The voestalpine employee shareholding scheme was established 18 years ago as a joint project between the management and Works Council, and was designed to guarantee a stable core ownership structure in the wake of privatization through the Group’s IPO.

At present voestalpine Mitarbeiterbeteiligung Privatstiftung (the employee foundation for the Group’s employee shareholding scheme) holds around 12.52% of voestalpine AG registered capital. The foundation also exercises the voting rights for around 1.28% privately-held shares belonging to current and former Group employees. After the capital increase this share will rise to 13.58% (including what will then be around 1.27% in private shares). Following the capital increase, voestalpine Mitarbeiterbeteiligung Privatstiftung will hold a total of 14.85% of the voting rights of voestalpine AG. In addition to Austria, the shareholding scheme is currently open to employees in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Great Britain, Italy, Poland, Romania, the Czech Republic, and most recently in Spain and Sweden. More than 25,000 current and former employees from 150 European Group companies now hold a total of just over 24 million shares in voestalpine AG.

In Austria participation is mainly financed through a portion of collective wage increases, and, although to a much lesser degree, bonuses exchanged for shares. Accordingly, the employees receive the number of shares which reflect these contributions. In the international model employees are invited to purchase shares individually each year. The employee shareholding scheme is managed by voestalpine Mitarbeiterbeteiligung Privatstiftung.