 | Dr. Rudolf Schulten,
CEO of MVV Energie AG |
Dear Shareholders and Friends of MVV Energie,
The MVV Energie Group can look back on an extraordinary year characterised by major changes and important strategic decisions. During the 2003/04 financial year we laid the foundations necessary for the MVV Energie Group to maintain its successful development and to generate stable economic success for its shareholders in the long term.
At the beginning of the year under report we subjected our group of companies to a very thorough review. In March 2004, having thoroughly examined our strategy and business portfolio, we resolved together with the Supervisory Board to focus the Group's portfolio of shareholdings on its profitable core business and to modernise the Group's organisational structure in line with its strategic realignment. By the end of 2003/04 financial year, these measures had been consistently implemented.
Following the rapid broad-based growth on which we had focused since the liberalisation of the electricity market and our stock market flotation, the MVV Energie Group is now channelling all of its energies into its core business, the distribution of electricity, district heating, gas and water. In addition to these segments, we will continue to invest in the high-growth fields of energy services and environmental energy involving the incineration and extraction of energy from waste and biomass.
We are already well positioned across Germany in these fields, which are closely related to our core business. We are now according the highest priority to increasing our efficiency and profitability and thus to strengthening our earnings and capital power. The process of focusing on our core business and streamlining our portfolio of shareholdings on the one hand and the realignment of the Group's organisational structure on the other mean that we have laid the foundations required for this next step. We will exploit the strengths available within our group of companies to achieve sustainable success in this respect.
We consider our network of municipal utility companies to be an important pillar for our growth. Following our successful acquisitions in Offenbach, Ingolstadt and Solingen in previous years, during the 2003/04 financial year we acquired a further attractive and profitable 51% shareholding in Stadtwerke Kiel AG. The core business of this company is just as solid and cash-rich as that of MVV Energie AG and its other shareholdings in municipal utility companies. more >> |
