OMV AG Annual Shareholders Meeting

May 14, 2019 PM UTC 查看原文

OMV.VA - OMV AG
OMV AG Annual Shareholders Meeting
May 14, 2019 / 12:00PM GMT

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Corporate Participants
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* Peter H. LÃ¶scher
OMV Aktiengesellschaft - Chairman of Supervisory Board
* Rainer Seele
OMV Aktiengesellschaft - Chairman of Executive Board & CEO
* Reinhard Florey
OMV Aktiengesellschaft - CFO & Member of Executive Board

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Presentation
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Peter H. LÃ¶scher, OMV Aktiengesellschaft - Chairman of Supervisory Board [1]
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Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, I would like to welcome you most cordially to the Annual General Meeting of OMV Aktiengesellschaft. And I am happy that you have accepted the invitation in so large numbers. I would also like to welcome those who are watching this Annual General Meeting via the Internet.

In my function as the Chairman of the Supervisory Board, I take the chairmanship and open today's ordinary Annual General Meeting of OMV Aktiengesellschaft.

Private photo, video or voice recordings of the annual general meeting by any participants are not allowed. Taking pictures or films or voice recordings in the room reserved to people authorized by OMV. As in the past, the Annual General Meeting will be webcast from now on until the end of the reports of CEO, Mr. Seele, and member of the executive board, Mr. Florey.

A recording of the speeches will be available on the OMV website immediately after the Annual General Meeting. For reasons of taking minutes by the notary public, today's Annual General Meeting will be recorded.

I'm happy to inform you that the following members of the Supervisory Board are present today. The first, Deputy Chairman, Dr. Gertrude TumpelGugerell; Second Vice Chairman, Ms. Alyazia Ali Al Kuwaiti; Mr. Wolfgang Berndt; Mr. Draxler; Mr. Hall; Mr. Mansour Mohamed Al Mulla; Mr. Rose and Mr. Werner.

Representatives of the works council are Ms. Christine Asperger, Mr. Herbert Lindner, Mr. Alfred Redlich, Ms. Angela Schorna and Mr. Gerhard Singer. Members of the Board; CEO, Dr. Rainer Seele; Deputy, Johann Pleininger; Director, Reinhard Florey; and Director, Manfred Leitner will also take part in the Annual General Meeting today.

Furthermore, I would like to welcome Mr. Gerhard Schwartz and Mr. Alexander Wlasto as the representatives of the external auditor as well as those ladies and gentlemen who are taking part as guests at today's Annual General Meeting. Furthermore, I'd like to welcome Mr. Christian Meyer as the Public Notary of this Annual General Meeting. I ask Dr. Meyer to take the minutes of today's Annual General Meeting to certify the resolutions and to supervise the votes.

In the interest of speech, I will not use gender-specific terms. In conclusion, I would like to ask you to switch off your mobile phones or to switch them to silent mode.

I continue with the legal stipulations. I state that today's ordinary Annual General Meeting was convoked on the 9th of April 2019 in the official gazette of the Wiener Zeitung and this was done in due date and in due legal form. I also state that the electronic European dissemination was done via euro ad-hoc on the 9th of April 2019.

So that's today's Annual General Meeting. As regards the items on the agenda that were communicated has reached quorum. The documents necessary under Article 108, Stock Corporation Act have been made accessible since the 18th of April on the website of the company. Motions of entitled shareholders to supplement items on the agenda have not been sent to the company.

The company has received a proposal by the shareholder Osterreichische Beteiligungs AG relating to Item #8 on the agenda. This proposal was also published on the website of the company in due time and according to the motion. The agenda is also contained in your documents and therefore I assume that you know about the agenda and I will not read out the agenda to you.

Furthermore, I state and I -- that 247,445,280 no par value share registered within the legal deadline to this Annual General Meeting. The presence of today's Annual General Meeting will be announced before the first vote. At this time, I will also sign the list of participants and put it up for inspection.

As far as the procedure of today's AGM is concerned, I refer you to the written documents that you have received. This also contains administrative information as far as the formalities of today's AGM are concerned. If you want to request for leave to speak, please use the appropriate forms. If you need forms, please contact the people on site. Please state your question on the form and please also state whether you wanted to ask the question personally or whether the question should be read out.

Furthermore, I would like to point out that OMV processes personal data of the participants of the Annual General Meeting on the basis of the current data protection regulation in order to allow you to exert your rights as shareholders in the AGM. We also pointed that out in our Internet page as well as in the invitation to the General Assembly. Further information will be available in printed form in your meeting documents as well as on the Internet page that is explicitly reserved for this annual general meeting.

Let us turn to the agenda. Item #1 on the agenda, submission of the adopted financial statements 2018 including the Director's report, the consolidated corporate governance report, the consolidated payments to governments report, the consolidated non-financial report, the group financial statements 2018 including the Group Director's report, the proposal of the appropriation of the balance sheet profit as well as the supervisory board report for the financial year 2018.

The supervisory board audited and approved the accounts and the Director's reports 2018. This means that the annual accounts 2018 are adopted. The supervisory board also audited and approved the consolidated corporate governance report, the consolidated payments to government report as well as the consolidated non-financial report 2018, the non-financial report which is also called sustainability report.

Furthermore, the supervisory board audited and approved the group financial statements, the group Director's report and agreed to it. The checks and audits by the Supervisory Board have not given rise to any objections. The Supervisory Board decided to resolve the report of the Supervisory Board which is also printed in the annual reports of the OMV group.

The business year 2018 was a very successful year for OMV. Not only did we see an excellent financial performance, but also a decisive progress and implemented the long-term corporate strategy. The focus of the activities of the Supervisory Board in its 6 meetings and 16 committee meetings was the evaluation of large investment and acquisition opportunities. This includes 2 concession agreements for oil and gas fields in Abu Dhabi, the acquisition of a 15% participation at ADNOC Refining in Abu Dhabi, taking over the upstream business from Shell in New Zealand and setting up a joint venture with Sapura Energy in Malaysia.

Personnel matters of the Executive Board, successor planning for the Supervisory Board and the examination of the remuneration of the Executive Board were further priorities of our activities in the previous year. The mandate of Mr. Florey was extended by 2 years up until the 30th of June 2021 and the Executive Team was confirmed in its current setup.

Due to the fact that the term of office of 8 of the current 10 Supervisory Board members is expiring, the Supervisory Board in the course of self-evaluation intensively dealt with successorship planning of the Supervisory Board, its target structure and the competence profile of the members of the Supervisory Board. The remuneration committee analyzed the structure and level of remuneration supported by external experts.

In past year's Annual General Meeting, the revision of the remuneration of the Executive Board was already discussed in a detailed form. Apart from regulatory matters, we also tried to fulfill the expectations of advisors and investors in terms of a timely and contemporary remuneration system and we also wanted to take on a pioneering role as far as transparency is concerned. And the remuneration committee commits itself to its obligation for a responsive and sustainable incentive system.

I would like the pass the floor to Mr. Seele.

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Rainer Seele, OMV Aktiengesellschaft - Chairman of Executive Board & CEO [2]
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Dear shareholders, ladies and gentlemen, I cordially welcome you to our Annual General Meeting 2019. As usual, you have received the annual report of OMV. The title may have seemed a bit unusual for an annual report, namely 7 reasons why we are looking forward to tomorrow. But we have chosen this title quite judiciously and with our firm conviction because we have every reason to look forward to the future. These 7 reasons describe the substance and the ability to perform of OMV and they show the potential of its future of being successful.

The annual report also shows that we have many reasons to, well, be pleased about yesterday, especially about the past business year. Ladies and gentlemen, if we could only use one single word to describe the year 2018, it would be the word record. The business year 2018 has been a record year, a record year in several respects.

First, in 2018 we reached a clean CCS operating result to the amount of EUR 3.6 billion. That's the highest result in the history of our company. Second, in spite of paying a record dividend in 2017 and in spite of the fact that we financed several large acquisitions, our free cash flow after dividends is clearly positive at EUR 263 million. Thirdly, in our upstream business, we managed to achieve a record production and to reduce production costs. Again, in 2018, our production cost was $7 per barrel and we're thus among the lead in our -- among our competitors. The capacity utilization of our refineries was at a sensational 92% in spite of the planned and scheduled standstill of our refinery Petrobrazi in Romania. In the second half of the year, so after completing the turnaround, our refineries will operate at full capacity utilization.

We don't just want to report about these records, but we want these records to be felt for you, our shareholders. This is why together with the AGM and the Supervisory Board, we suggest to pay out a dividend of EUR 1.75 per share. This is another record. And we thus fulfill our promise that we have given to you, our shareholders, and to the capital markets. Furthermore, it is a sign of our appreciation for the trust that you have placed in your OMV.

Before going into more detail concerning the business year 2018, I would like to take a short look at the first few months of this year. The first quarter was characterized by one of the largest acquisitions in the history of OMV. At the end of January in Abu Dhabi, we signed an agreement on the acquisition of a 15% share in ADNOC Refining. This is an investment in the fourth largest refinery in the world, which is part of the Ruwais complex and it is integrated in our petrochemicals activities. Through this acquisition, OMV will increase its refining capacity by about 40%.

Furthermore, we agreed with ADNOC to set up a joint venture in Abu Dhabi to market refinery products, especially exporting to markets in Asia and in the Middle East. A few weeks later we signed 2 memoranda of understanding with ADNOC with the objective of examining the possibilities of a deeper cooperation in terms of petrochemicals and the ReOil technology, which is a technology that OMV holds the patent for in most major markets. If we also consider the acquisition of the 2 offshore oil fields in Abu Dhabi, you see that we want to have a fully integrated business model in Abu Dhabi from the well, the refinery and petrochemicals, all the way to the marketing and trading international markets.

In the first quarter, we also concluded the acquisition of a 50% share of the Upstream Company of the Malaysian Sapura. This company, they're newly founded, Sapura OMV underlines our objective to develop the Asia-Pacific region into a new strong core region. These 3 activities show in one single quarter the core elements of OMV strategy until 2025 geographic diversification of the portfolio, the export of our successful integrated business models including petrochemicals as well as the strong focus on the growing markets in the Asia-Pacific region and in the Middle East.

The market environment, however, was difficult. At the beginning of the year, we had low oil and gas prices and weak refinery margins. But what had a bigger impact on the prices had been the security situation in Libya. The security situation lead to production losses and losses in trading that had an impact on the results of the first quarter. At the end of the quarter we managed to resume oil production and this has contributed significantly to ensure that OMV has reached a production level of 500,000 barrels per day for the first time in its history. But in the first quarter, we could not sell any volumes produced in Libya.

Now let me briefly talk about the business year 2018 in more detail. Ladies and gentlemen, the global economic situation proved to be a very challenging environment characterized by uncertainties and volatilities, geopolitical tensions, trading conflicts and the risk of sanctions, influenced not only the business climate and the mood prevailing at the financial markets, but also the supply situation in the oil markets, and thus led to a lot of nervous people.

Basically, the global demand for oil has increased in 2018, like in previous years, it went up by 1.2% to 99.2 million barrels a day. Towards the end of the year, it reached the mark of 100 million barrels per day for the first time. On the other hand, the global oil production also rose to 99.9 million barrels. The strongest driver had been the U.S. with an increase in production of 16% to 15.4 million barrels. The price of oil did not so much react to the economic fundamentals, but to the aforementioned geopolitical tensions and the threat of new sanctions. The oil price showed high volatility and it fell from a maximum of $86.2 in October to a minimum of $50.2 at year-end.

Ladies and gentlemen, there's one thing that turned out to be quite clearly the case last year. The Strategy 2025 of OMV presented in March of 2018 is the main success factor in such a challenging and difficult global market environment. Thanks to our integrated upstream and downstream business model, any market fluctuation and volatility of prices could be compensated for and we had a very stable revenue situation.

Furthermore, the measures to diversify our portfolio took effect so that in terms of regional conflicts, OMV is much more resilient today than in the past. Production losses such as the one in Libya at the beginning of the year could thus be better compensated. And the overall group can grow in a sustainable way in spite of this difficult market environment and achieve robust results, even record results as the year 2018 showed.

But this protective effect that makes the company more resilient towards negative market environment is only one aspect of our strategy. At the core, we are talking about an offensive forward-looking strategy, a strategy of growth and value increase. Now, where do we see these strategic principles implemented in the concrete activities of the past business year. The year that has been characterized by a large number of transactions, primarily to accelerate growth in the oil and gas production, to increase reserves and to improve our cost position.

In total, in 2018 we had 4 acquisitions and 4 divestments. If you combine these activities like dots in a sketch, you can see the red strategic thread of these measures. All acquisitions were transactions and upstream, which promoted the international breadth of our portfolio. The core region of the Middle East and Africa was strengthened by acquiring oil and gas fields in Abu Dhabi. We are talking about a 20% investment in the oil fields SARB and Umm Lulu for $1.5 billion and the acquisition of a 5% share in the development project Ghasha for medium-term gas and condensate production.

These 2 projects underline our long-term commitment in the country of our second biggest core shareholder, Abu Dhabi because we got this concession for the coming 40 years. Since there is so much oil and gas in Abu Dhabi, I'm confident that we are going to also be producing there for 40 years.

There are 2 further acquisitions that we used to build up the new core region, Asia Pacific region. We took over the entire upstream business of Shell in New Zealand and thus our production at year-end rose by 30,000 barrels. And on the other hand, we also acquired a 50% share of Sapura Upstream in Malaysia, which is a strategic partnership with a future perspective.

Together, we are planning to invest in the expansion of the natural gas production in Malaysia and to supply the Asian markets increasingly with our own production, which is a further step in the direction of the diversification of our production sites and sales markets of OMV. Our divestments focused on the sale of non-strategic assets or reservoirs with a declining production. Those were companies in Pakistan and some selected assets in Tunisia. Furthermore, we also sold regulated shares in the Norwegian pipeline Polarled and the gas processing plants Nyhamna and the gas power plant Samsun in Turkey.

The most important common feature of our portfolio measures consists in the fact that we have place to focus on regions with low production costs and a fast production start. This enabled us to grow and to have a very fast return on capital as part of our cash flow management strategy. Our newly acquired assets in New Zealand are making a significant contribution to the production and profitability like our participations in Malaysia and Abu Dhabi.

Now let us take a look at the business development in 2018. This clearly shows the success of the strategy in terms of figures. In upstream, we managed to increase the oil and gas production by 23% to 427,000 barrels per day. Our production in Russia and Abu Dhabi has clearly contributed to this growth.

In Libya, in spite of difficult boundary conditions, we managed to reach a relatively stable daily production of about 30,000 barrels per day. Unfortunately, the production in the largest oil field at Sharara had to be stopped at the end of the year. We have now resumed production there and managed to increase it to 35,000 barrels a day, but the situation is still very fragile.

Of course, in all of our portfolio measures, we ensure a sustainable production and thus our secure reserves were increased by 11% to 1.27 billion barrels of oil equivalent. This positive development with an annual reserve replacement rate of 180% in 2018 has been possible owing to acquisitions and successful exploration projects. By way of example, I would like to mention the discovery of the gas reservoir Hades & Iris as well as the exploration of the oil reservoir Wisting in Norway. With every appraisal well, the oil reserves are growing and we now estimate them at 440 million barrels.

In spite of all growth targets, our priority continues to be on cutting costs to strengthen our competitiveness. We're still on a good way because in 2018 we managed to reduce production costs by 20% to an average of $7 per barrel. In the first quarter of this year, the production costs were even at $6.8 per barrel.

In downstream in spite of the planned maintenance standstill in our refinery Petrobrazi in Romania, we have a very high capacity utilization of 92%. In the second half of the year, all our refineries were operated almost at full capacity utilization. With a good bulk business, we could, therefore, partially compensate our refining margin which was down 13%.

In terms of gas trading, we managed to increase our volume sold to 114 terawatt hours. And in Germany in 2018, we reached the market share of approximately 3%, and in the first quarter of this year, we managed to increase our market share in Germany to almost 4%. We want to continue our activities in gas trading and in this connection, we already have extended our gas supply contract from Gazprom until 2040 and we've increased the volumes by 1 billion cubic meters per year annually.

Ladies and gentleman, owing to this very positive development of our 2 business units, the OMV group reached a record-breaking result in 2018. With an operating result or clean CCS operating result of EUR 3.6 billion, a plus of 23% over 2017, this is the best result in the history of our company. The upstream business reached a very high increase of 66% year-on-year owing to prices and volumes so that we have a contribution of EUR 2 billion coming from upstream.

In downstream, the contribution sank due to the sale of the Turkish sales company Petrol Ofisi in the second quarter of 2017 and due to the lower refining margins by 7%, went down to EUR 1.6 billion. The contribution of our Romanian subsidiary OMV Petrom has increased significantly from EUR 718 million to EUR 1 billion.

The boundary conditions in Romania have deteriorated, however. In recent months, we're not only seeing surprising tax increases, but we're also worried to see that the country is moving away from the free energy market. This is why we have to clearly reduce our investments and our exploration activities in order to partially offset these negative boundary conditions. At the same time, we are in an intensive dialogue with the Romanian government in order to be able to take a final investment decision for the Neptun Deep project. This is the development of a large gas field in the Black Sea which is not only a huge opportunity for OMV Petrom, but also for Romania itself. This investment of billions presupposes stable and investor-friendly boundary conditions and we're not seeing those currently.

Let us return to the results of OMV. Our active cash flow management developed very successfully. The very high operating cash flow of EUR 4.4 billion enabled us to pay out a record dividend for 2017 in the amount of EUR 1.50 per share so that in spite of substantial acquisitions, we achieved a positive free cash flow of EUR 263 million. What this means is that all these acquisitions worth billions were paid from our cash flow. And on top of that, in 2018 we paid out a record dividend and we also paid this dividend from the cash flow. Our gearing ratio was at 13% at year-end, very low so that OMV has a robust balance sheet for the New Year.

The net income attributable to shareholders rose from EUR 435 million to EUR 1.4 billion and earnings per share has almost tripled from EUR 1.33 per share to EUR 4.4 per share. Further results on these financial figures and individual KPIs will be provided to you by my colleague, our CFO, Reinhard Florey.

Ladies and gentlemen, strategy does not only mean to take transactions and portfolio measures, not only growth in terms of figures. Strategy also means responsibility, a sense of responsibility toward the company and toward society as a whole. This is why in our strategy we are talking about sustainability.

In 2018, OMV worked out a sustainability strategy and has defined binding targets. And I'm saying binding targets because sustainability is not used to embellish our brand, but we consider it as an integral and measurable component of our corporate strategy. Let me give you an example. I would like to emphasize one of the 5 focal areas, namely CO2 efficiency. CO2 efficiency plays an important role in this climate discussion. OMV is and remains an oil and gas company and we know that oil and gas, in spite of all the changes of the global energy mix, will play an important role in the coming decades.

It is, therefore, our task to strike a balance between security of supply with affordable energy and the protection of our climate. We're doing this under the heading Oil & Gas At Its Best. In this connection, I would like to give you 3 examples for binding targets. From the baseline of 2010, we wanted to reduce the CO2 intensity of our business activities by 19% until 2025. In parallel, the CO2 intensity of our product portfolio will be reduced by 4%.

By 2025, we're planning to invest EUR 500 million in the development of innovative energy solutions such as the ReOil pilot project where old plastics is turned into high grade synthetic crude oil. In future, we're going to increasingly bet on natural gas. Already today, OMV produces more gas and oil. Our gas business accounts for 59% of our production, we're going to continue this course in future.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you want to ensure sustainable energy supply and at the same time make a contribution to the protection of our climate, you need to focus on natural gas. Gas is not sufficiently seen as a problem solver today. Politicians as well as industry are called upon to identify and to use the potentials of natural gas to protect our climate and this should be done today rather than tomorrow.

If you want to move things forward, we need to do it now. Natural gas will have a direct impact to dramatically reduce CO2 emissions. The possible savings amount to more than 20% in the area of mobility and up to 50% if we phase out coal especially to produce power. To be able to reach these targets, we need to increasingly import natural gas and for that, we need sufficient transport capacities and different transport routes.

One of those will be the pipeline Nord Stream 2. In the past, many steps have been taken in order to keep the project in budget and in time. More than 1,100 kilometers of pipes, that's almost half of the entire pipeline, have already been placed. The project company has entered into an intensive dialog with Danish authorities in order to get the final approvals for the last section.

Three different routes have been submitted and when the Danish authorities will decide, well we cannot say from today's point of view. But we trust in Denmark to take a speedy decision on the basis of the existing laws to make sure that what makes Europe an attractive business location will be kept, namely investment security.

Ladies and gentlemen, why is OMV so convinced of this pipeline project? Well, for a simple reason. We know that the demand for gas in Europe will rise and that our own natural gas production will continue to decline. This means that we'll have to import evermore natural gas and we cannot be dependent on just 1 or 2 transport routes. In future we will need more transport routes to Europe and Nord Stream 2 will be one of them. It will bring low-cost natural gas to Europe in a reliable fashion and thus contribute to the security of supply of European countries and the competiveness of the European economy.

By way of conclusion, I would like to make a short outlook on the current business year. Ladies and gentlemen, OMV will continue to grow in 2019. However, after the record year of acquisitions in 2018, we want to focus primarily on the integration and consolidation of the acquired assets and to continue to grow by active portfolio management on the basis of existing assets. There are 2 projects in our agenda for this year that will be completed.

In the third quarter, we will have the closing of our 15% investment in the Ruwais Refinery in Abu Dhabi. And furthermore we're going to intensify the negotiations with Gazprom to acquire a 25% share in the gas and condensate fields, Achimov IV and V. In the Upstream business, we believe there will be a significant increase of our total production by about 20% to about 500,000 barrels a day. In this assumption, we start from the fact that the oil production in Libya will continue and will remain stable at 35,000 barrels a day.

On the market side, in 2019 we expect an average Brent crude oil price of $65 and gas prices that are slightly lower than the previous year in the European spot markets. In the Downstream business, we assume that the refining margins will continue to remain under pressure and will maybe remain below $5 per barrel in the annual average.

In terms of the capacity utilization of our refineries, we believe that we can keep it above the high level of the previous year of 92% because no maintenance shutdowns are scheduled for 2019. We expect that we can continue to increase the volumes of natural gas sold this year, but due to the mild winter, there may be a pressure on the trading margins.

Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, during this AGM, we're going to report about targets, figures, decisions, transactions, optimizations and innovations. In my presentation, I managed to present record-breaking results in the past business year. But the foundation of all that is not investments and signed deals and contract, it is not oil rigs or pipelines or filling stations. The basis of all of the success, ladies and gentlemen, is thousands of employees of the OMV Group across the world who are doing an excellent job day after day. And on behalf of the entire Executive Board, I would like to thank all our employees from the bottom of my heart.

At the beginning of my statement, I referred to the 7 reasons why we have reason to look forward to the future. The main reason are our employees. It is them that fill these reasons with life. They are the hearts and the minds of this company and they are the driving force for the future growth of your OMV. Thank you for your trust and thank you for your attention.

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Unidentified Company Representative, [3]
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Thank you very much, Mr. Seele. I pass the floor to Mr. Florey. Please.

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Reinhard Florey, OMV Aktiengesellschaft - CFO & Member of Executive Board [4]
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Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished shareholders, I am very happy to present the most important financial KPIs of the OMV Group on the business year 2018 and the results of the first quarter 2019. Both the IFRS group statements as well as the individual statements of OMV Aktiengesellschaft prepared under local GAAP received an unqualified auditor's opinion. On behalf of OMV Group, I would like to thank Ernst & Young Wirtschaftsprufungsgesellschaft for the excellent cooperation.

As CFO, I have the obligation to ensure a performance culture to establish strict cost discipline and allow profitable growth on the basis of a strong financial basis in order to offer you, distinguished shareholders, an attractive dividend. Ladies and gentlemen, the year 2018 showed something very clearly, we keep our promises. In the past business year, together with our employees, we continuously increased the efficiency of OMV. I am proud to report today that we reduced our cost base in 2018 by more than EUR 100 million as compared to 2017.

We achieved our efficiency goal markedly before -- markedly earlier than planned, 2 years earlier than planned. At the same time, we grew profitably. This is demonstrated not only by the extraordinarily successful past year, but also the financial growth potential that we see in our portfolio for the coming years. OMV is perfectly prepared for the future, even if the future should be challenging and volatile.

We have a tried and tested model of integrated Upstream and Downstream activities on the one hand, and on the other hand a broad geographical base following the strategic transformation of OMV. This created the ground to tackle volatilities in international, financial and crude markets, as well as volatilities in international politics. Notwithstanding growth, the centerpiece of our financial strategy is a strong balance sheet with excellent credit rating. Here too 2018 is no exception.

Let me emphasize again, apart and in spite of the major investments in Abu Dhabi and New Zealand, and the payment of a record dividend, we completed the year with an even stronger balance sheet. This is the result of our focus on cash generation and cost management. Our most important promise is to let you, ladies and gentlemen, shareholders, participate directly in our success via our progressive dividend policy. As Mr. Seele already said, we propose an increase of the dividend to EUR 1.75 per share, the highest dividend paid in the history of OMV.

It has already been said that 2018 was a year of record. We have the highest clean CCS EBIT in the history of OMV. What makes me particular happy is that this success was achieved by both operational divisions. Downstream has remained a constant source of earnings in 2018 at EUR 1.6 billion. At the same time, profitability in Upstream could be increased enormously from EUR 40 million in 2016 to EUR 2 billion in 2018.

After deducting from the financial results, taxes and minorities, the clean CCS net income attributable to shareholders amounts to EUR 1.6 billion, still at a high level although slightly below the previous year owing to a higher tax rate. The group tax rate -- the clean group tax rate was 39% as compared to 25% last year following higher earnings in Upstream in countries with a traditionally higher tax burden in our industry like Norway, Libya and the Arab states.

The clean CCS earnings per share amounts to EUR 4.88. Not only the clean results but also the net income could be substantially increased. The better operating performance is reflected in the net income attributable to shareholders in the amount of EUR 1.4 billion. The earnings per share in 2018 amounted to EUR 4.40 and like the net income attributable to shareholders, it increased to more than 3x the amount of last year.

OMV doesn't only produce good results, but also strong cash flows. One thing is very clear, focusing on active cost management and investments in projects and the purchase of assets that generate prompt cash flow returns pays off. The year 2018 shows that in an impressive way. The development since 2018 shows how we could increase the cash flow from operating activities. Starting from EUR 3 billion in 2018, we had a record value of EUR 4.4 billion in 2018.

Let me state clearly, this is an impressive development, but it is not the end of our journey. We want to increase the cash potential of OMV further and in the medium run, we aim at increasing the operating cash flow before networking capital changes to a minimum of EUR 5 billion.

Ladies and gentlemen, I can only give this positive outlook because we have a highly attractive investment and innovation pipeline, which was also continued in 2018. Organic investments in 2018 amounted to EUR 1.9 billion. This is a slight increase in a year-on-year comparison and reflects a development of large scale project such as the newly acquired oil field SARB and Umm Lulu in Abu Dhabi; and the gas field, Aasta Hansteen in Norway, which started operations in December 2018 successfully.

In spite of high investments, 2018 ended with an extraordinarily high organic free cash flow before dividends in the amount of EUR 2.5 billion, which is more than EUR 600 million higher than last year in spite of higher organic investments. Distinguished shareholders, this is the centerpiece of our KPIs which shows the cash potential of OMV. And this is also the reason why large investments, record dividends and a strong balance sheet are not contradictory in OMV.

Let us have a detailed look at the source and use of funds in 2018. 2018 was a year of active portfolio management. The figures show that apart from a strong cash flow from operating activities, we also cashed in more than EUR 0.5 billion from selling off non-strategic assets. Mr. Seele already explained the 4 transactions. How did we allocate these funds last year? Apart from the already mentioned organic investments of EUR 1.9 billion, we paid out EUR 0.8 billion dividends and invested EUR 1.9 billion in acquisitions. Taking into account substantial transactions and dividends still leaves a positive free cash flow of EUR 0.3 billion.

We are extremely proud of the fact that expansion of OMV in the past year was done from operating cash flow. In 2017, acquisitions were financed primarily by divestments. Growing cash flows also strengthened our financial basis. I already emphasized in the beginning, a strong balance sheet is the centerpiece of our financial strategy. This is why it is very pleasing to report today that the year 2018 ended with a strong balance sheet.

On the basis of a extremely successful cash flow management, the year 2018 closed with a slightly lower gearing ratio of 13%, which is markedly below our long-term goal of 30%. At the same time, we have liquid funds of EUR 4 billion which provides us with room to maneuver in our profitable growth strategy. Financial stability and necessary liquidity for the transactions in 2019 is clearly given. A solid financial basis of OMV is also confirmed by the 2 large rating agencies. In May last year, Moody raised a rating of OMV to A3 with stable outlook. Also, Fitch confirms that with a rating of A- with a stable outlook.

Let us have a look at the development of the balance sheet. Due to the expansion of OMV, the balance sheet total increased to EUR 37 billion as compared to EUR 32 billion in the years 2016 and 2017. Long-term assets at the end of 2018 amounted to EUR 25 billion as compared to EUR 22 billion in 2017 and EUR 28 billion in 2016.

Equity adds up to EUR 15.3 billion as compared to [EUR 40 billion] in the previous years. The sum of bonds and other long-term interest-bearing liabilities amounted to EUR 4.9 billion, long-term recultivation obligations were increased following the acquisitions in Abu Dhabi and New Zealand and, as shown, at EUR 3.7 billion.

Other long-term liabilities amounts to EUR 3.3 billion. The long-term funding of OMV sums up and gear to EUR 27 billion and is more than EUR 2 billion above long-term assets. Let me state that we have an increase in value of OMV. And the golden rule, namely matching securities, is also fulfilled.

Ladies and gentlemen, each investment, each acquisition must fulfill something at OMV. An attractive return on capital employed and a significant increase in economic value for our shareholders. What about the return on average capital employed? Two of our KPIs of our company are the CCS return on average capital employed, the clean CCS and the CCS economic value added before special effects abbreviated EVA. The ROACE expresses the return on average capital employed and shows the substantial value added in the current -- in the past 2 years.

When we announced our growth strategy, we targeted a CCS ROACE of 12% in 2017 as well as in 2018. We more than fulfilled these targets in spite of investing in development projects and in spite of investing in acquisitions.

The CCS EVA, for the second consecutive time, amounted to EUR 1 billion. That means we have an increase in value for the company of more than EUR 1 billion in addition to earning capital costs. That's the message for you ladies and gentlemen. An investment in our share clearly pays off. As I already said, the target of all our activities is to offer an attractive return.

Against this background, the price development last year after an increase of more than 50% in 2017, last year was not satisfactory for us. Despite that fact, a glance at the performance in the past 3 years shows that OMV was better than the market average. Over a 3 year period, OMV share, in spite of the development last year, showed excellent development and was markedly above market average. If you had invested EUR 1,000 in 2017 in OMV shares and also invested the dividends in OMV shares again, the value of your investment would have risen to EUR 1,600 in 2018. This corresponds to an average return of 17% per year.

In spite of the developments of last year, we are not resting on our laurels. We see and we are very happy that the market responds to our efforts in the first months 2018 and the price of our share has been risen again in spite of a challenging market environment. Mr. Seele already talked about the strategic decisions which were taken in the first months of this year. Financial performance, in spite of a difficult macroeconomic environment and the difficult situation in Libya, is solid.

The CCS operating results before special effects fell by 17% to EUR 759 million especially because of weaker figures in upstream because Libya failed to contribute to our result. The first quarter at the same time showed that the focus of OMV on cash flow and costs pays off. The cash flow before networking capital changes was EUR 1.2 billion, and could again be increased in a year-on-year comparison.

Ladies and gentlemen, as you see, OMV hasn't only developed financially in 2018, but also prepared the ground for excellent results based on the coming years. By continuing the path, we will make sure that you have attractive returns and that the value of your investment will increase. We are on track. We are on track to achieve the clean CCS operating goals. By the end of 2020, we aim at increasing the CCS operating result to a minimum of EUR 4 billion. By 2025, we want to increase that to EUR 5 billion.

We will furthermore focus on a strong balance and continuous increase in value. Our long-term goal has a CCS ROACE of minimum of 12% and the long-term gearing ratio of lower than 30%. We want to manage that by concentrating on operating efficiency, capital efficiency, a balanced financing structure and the sustainable value basis. This is accompanied by rigorous financial risk and compliance management.

Focus on cash management will remain to be an integral part of the DNA of OMV. We aim at increasing the operating cash flow before networking capital changes to EUR 5 billion. At the same time, we plan to organically invest among between EUR 2 billion and EUR 2.5 billion per year in order to realize the growth potential of our portfolio. Strict capital discipline will remain to be one of the pillars of our financial strategy and our growth history.

Since introducing our strategy, we have been working hard. Within a year, we transformed our portfolio and started highly attractive project. This year we expect the closing of the ADNOC refining transaction and the Achimov IV/V in Russia. We already concluded the start of our newly founded Sapura OMV in the first quarter. Further large scale transactions are not in our agenda.

In the short run, we aim at successfully integrating the youngest transactions and to optimally develop our assets in order to make sure that we have the operative excellence that is characteristic for OMV. We updated our priorities, how we will allocate our strong cash flow. We will invest in our current business and develop organic project. This remains the utmost priority.

Ranking second is paying out of dividends. So far acquisitions were ranking second, now it is replaced by dividends. Reduction of debts ranks third. Distinguish shareholders, what I said shows clearly we will continue to let you participate in our success.

I would like to end my presentation by clearly stating that I support a progressive dividend policy. The dividend policy of OMV is clear. We aim at increasing the dividend year after year depending on our financial performance. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you very much for the trust you have given in OMV, for OMV. Thank you.

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Unidentified Company Representative, [5]
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Thank you, Mr. Florey. Thank you, Mr. Seele, for your reports. I'd like to thank the entire Executive Board for the constructive cooperation. On behalf of the Supervisory Board, I would like to thank the members of the Executive Board and all employees of OMV for their commitment.

I would like to ask Mr. Seele and the representatives of the workforce to pass on this expression of gratitude to our collaborators. We would now like to thank our Internet viewers for their interest and I'd like to say

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