HELLA Annual General Meeting decides to suspend dividend payment

Lippstadt, 25 September 2020. The shareholders of HELLA GmbH & Co. KGaA approved all the items on the agenda by a large majority at today's Annual General Meeting, which was held exclusively online for the first time. Among other things, the shareholders decided, with 99 percent of the votes, to suspend the dividend payment for the past fiscal year 2019/2020 (1 June 2019 to 31 May 2020). The actions of the management, the Shareholder Committee and the Supervisory Board were also approved by a large majority.

"I am pleased that our shareholders continue to place their trust in us. Especially in these challenging times, this is an important signal", said HELLA CEO Dr. Rolf Breidenbach. "Our goal is to keep the company as strong as possible and to sustainably safeguard our financial flexibility going forward. The dividend resolution offers us an additional level of freedom in this regard."

In his speech, HELLA CEO Dr. Rolf Breidenbach stressed that competitive pressures and cost pressures in the automotive industry would continue to increase. "The environment will become much more difficult once again. We are proactively adapting to this by continuing to invest consistently in software, digitisation, automation and automotive trends such as electromobility and autonomous driving. At the same time, we will also make structural adjustments to strengthen our competitiveness on the cost side. Because it is always better to act from a position of strength. And HELLA is strong: we are strategically well positioned. We have a promising business model, we have a global presence and are technological leaders in numerous product fields. Our aim is to ensure that this continues to be the case."

Due to the corona pandemic, this year's Annual General Meeting was held as a virtual event without shareholders in physical attendance. Around 500 shareholders and guests followed today's Annual General Meeting online. A total of 86 percent of the voting share capital was represented. Detailed information on this year's Annual General Meeting and each of the voting results can be found on the HELLA website in the Investor Relations section.