The Management Board of voestalpine AG

“These days, our room to maneuver with regard to describing our economic expectations is becoming more and more narrow from quarter to quarter. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find something new in the outlook for the coming months because both the political and economic mood, which is colored by the same negative issues, has created a heavy burden—both factually and emotionally—for the development of the economy. This now applies not only to Europe but increasingly to the situation in other global economic regions.“

From today’s perspective, we can add nothing to these words that prefaced our last quarterly report, except that, since August 7, when this report was published, the economic situation has worsened and the outlook for the last weeks of this year and the first part of 2013 does not bode well for the development of the global economy.

In an economic environment that has been extremely challenging, the voestalpine Group continues to be comparatively successful thanks to its technology and quality orientation and a position that is becoming more and more global. It is especially in these difficult times that we can uphold our claim of being a benchmark with regard to earnings—at least in Europe—based on our technology, quality, and cost leadership. Nevertheless, despite the fact that the first half of 2012/13 corresponded to previous earnings expectations, in view of the increased uncertainty, we feel compelled for reasons of commercial prudence—to reduce the expectations—for the entire business year with regard to EBITDA and EBIT by a range of EUR 100 million each to an EBITDA of EUR 1.4 billion and an EBIT of EUR 800 million respectively. Against the backdrop of the momentum of the downturn in recent months, we are assuming that volatility will escalate in the short term, thus also increasing planning uncertainty.

Finally, some information about the presentation of our operating result. After long, internal discussions about the informative value of the individual reporting categories, starting immediately, we have decided—especially in view of the current economic trend—to put EBITDA (operating result) instead of EBIT in the center of our financial reporting, as the figure with the greatest informative value. By adopting this method of presentation, we are also following a more and more common international trend.

Linz, November 6, 2012

The Management Board