Looking Ahead: Outlook and Opportunities
- Effects of financial crisis impossible to predict with sufficient certainty
- Strategic orientation key to long-term growth targets
- Wide-ranging opportunities harbor strong earnings potential
- Consistent, earnings-driven dividend policy
Looking ahead
Competitive advantage of good strategic positioning
A realistic judgment of how the financial crisis will impact on the real economy is not currently possible. Uncertainty about the way forward and the scale of the global crisis has grown considerably in the last several months. Leading economic research institutes expect that the world economy will undergo a major slowdown in 2009, although with regional variation. The growth markets of the recent past will also be affected.HOCHTIEF is outstandingly well placed with its strategy of spanning the whole infrastructure project, real estate and facility life cycle and of serving international markets. We can seize available opportunities and better make up for cyclical downturns. Our integrated capability portfolio and global presence lend HOCHTIEF considerable risk diversification and greater independence from fluctuations in specific industries and markets. By closely dovetailing the elements of that portfolio, we are also able to generate synergies and thus add value for customers. We see HOCHTIEF's strategic positioning as a sound competitive advantage and the key to attaining our long-term growth targets' through both favorable and adverse phases of the economic cycle.
Group forecast subject to uncertainty
With the financial crisis dynamically unfolding, we are currently only able to provide a very limited forecast for the Group in 2009, burdened still by major uncertainty. As the year progresses, we will add further detail to our expectations regarding HOCHTIEF's performance in our quarterly reports.Our planning is based on the assumptions that the international finance and capital markets will increasingly normalize from 2010 and that there will not be a sustained recessive setback in the world economy. We also work on the basis that the situation in areas of political tension will not lastingly deteriorate any further. We anticipate an increasing rise in the euro against the US dollar and the Australian dollar through fiscal 2009. We expect euro exchange rates in 2009 averaging about USD 1.30 and AUD 2.00.
