The Supervisory Board of Siemens AG intends to propose to the Annual Shareholders’ Meeting the appointment of Ernst & Young GmbH, Stuttgart, to serve as independent auditors for fiscal 2019. This is the result of an intensive dialogue between the Supervisory Board, the Audit Committee and the Managing Board of Siemens AG as well as of an extensive tender process pursuant to relevant European statutory provisions. In the view of the aforementioned governing bodies and committee, Ernst & Young presented the most attractive offer in the tender process.
At its meeting yesterday, the Supervisory Board of Siemens AG approved the company's new Vision 2020+ strategy and reassigned responsibilities within Siemens' Managing Board.
- On a comparable basis, excluding currency translation and portfolio effects, orders rose 21% and revenue was level with the prior-year period
- On a nominal basis, orders climbed 16% to €22.8 billion driven by a higher volume from large orders, while revenue came in at €20.5 billion, 4% lower than the prior-year quarter due primarily to currency translation effects; the book-to-bill ratio was 1.11
- Industrial Business profit was up 2% at €2.2 billion and Industrial Business profit margin was 10.7%; excellent performance by Digital Factory and improvements in many Divisions partly offset by a sharp decrease in profit and profitability at Power and Gas
- Net income of €1.2 billion was held back by substantially higher income tax rate compared to Q3 FY 2017, which also benefited from positive effects in Centrally managed portfolio activities; basic earnings per share (EPS) of €1.36 compared to €1.67 in Q3 FY 2017
"Our global team delivered a strong quarter, highlighted by outstanding order intake, outperforming the market. We diligently address our opportunities and challenges going forward," said Joe Kaeser, President and Chief Executive Officer of Siemens AG.
- New company structure: Three "Operating Companies" – "Gas and Power", "Smart Infrastructure" and "Digital Industries" – and the "Strategic Companies" Siemens Healthineers, Siemens Gamesa and the planned company Siemens Alstom
- More entrepreneurial freedom at individual businesses for accelerated growth: Revenue and margin targets raised
- Targeted expansion of digitalization business: Acquisition of mendix
- New growth field: "Internet of Things (IoT) Integration Services"
Siemens is setting the course for long-term value creation through accelerated growth and stronger profitability with a simplified and leaner company structure. The main aim of the Vision 2020+ company strategy is to give Siemens' individual businesses significantly more entrepreneurial freedom under the strong Siemens brand in order to sharpen their focus on their respective markets. Plans also call for strengthening the company's growth portfolio through investments in new growth fields such as IoT integration services, distributed energy management and infrastructure solutions for electric mobility. The concentrated expansion of industrial digitalization, in which Siemens is already the world leader, will make a further contribution. As a result, both the annual revenue growth rate and the profit margin of the company's Industrial Business are expected to increase by two percentage points over the medium term. Basic earnings per share are expected to grow faster than revenue over the medium term.
On March 2nd, 2017, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, Siemens CEO Joe Kaeser and further high-ranking representatives witnessed the symbolic inauguration of the first phase of Siemens' megaproject in Egypt. The event marked an important milestone towards the completion of the project.
In collaboration with the Egyptian Ministry of Electricity and Renewable Energy, Siemens and its consortium partners, Orascom Construction and Elsewedy Electric, announced on July 24, 2018 the completion of the Egypt Megaproject in record time. The parties celebrated the combined cycle commissioning and the start of operations at the Beni Suef, Burullus and New Capital power plants. The stations will add a total of 14.4 gigawatts (GW) of power generation capacity to Egypt's national grid, enough power to supply up to 40 million people with reliable electricity. With this milestone, Egypt and Siemens have set a new world record for execution of modern, fast-track power projects, delivering 14.4 GW of power in only 27.5 months. A single combined cycle power plant block with a capacity of 1,200 megawatts typically takes approximately 30 months for construction. For the Egypt Megaproject Siemens in parallel built twelve of these blocks in record time and connected them to the grid.
Following the delivery of several Siemens SGT5-8000H gas turbines, the first steam turbine for the Egypt Megaproject began its journey in December 2016 from the Siemens factory in Muelheim to the power plant Beni Suef in Egypt. The main components of the 670-ton cargo were lifted with a heavy-duty crane from the production hall onto a transport vessel standing by at the plant's inland harbor facilities. The vessel transported the SST-5000 steam turbine from Muelheim to the deep-water port of Antwerp where it was loaded onto a heavy cargo ship and transported to Egypt.
After the steam turbines installation, the waste heat from the gas turbines will be used to produce steam that will then drive the steam turbine, thus increasing the overall power output and efficiency of the power plant. In total, Siemens will deliver twelve SST-5000 steam turbines for the Egyptian power plants Beni Suef, Burullus and New Capital. All of these steam turbines will be manufactured at the Siemens factory in Muelheim.
- Siemens' lightning information service detected about 443,000 lightning strikes in Germany in 2017 – 11,000 more than in 2016
- Garmisch-Partenkirchen was the German district struck most often by lightning, lowest rates were in the city of Pirmasens
- Germany's "capital of lightning" was Mainz, followed by Wiesbaden and Berlin
- At the European level, Slovenia leads the ranking
Garmisch-Partenkirchen District in Upper Bavaria was the German region with the most lightning activity in 2017. Siemens' lightning information service BLIDS (which stands for Blitz-Informationsdienst von Siemens) registered 3.51 lightning strikes per square kilometer in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 2017. The districts of Main-Taunus and Giessen in the state of Hesse were on second and third place with 3.47 and 3.46 ground flashes per square kilometer, respectively. Germany's lowest concentration of lightning strikes was in the cities of Pirmasens (0.16), Oldenburg and Bonn (both at 0.18). With lightning hitting 2.4 times per square kilometer, Mainz led the country's list of state capitals. Overall, at 443,000 strikes, BLIDS again registered a comparatively low level of atmospheric discharges in Germany – although 2016's record low level, with about 432,000 strikes detected, was exceeded in 2017 by 11,000 (2,5 percent). For the first time, BLIDS is also making data available for Central Europe.
- Siemens report "Cities in the Driving Seat" encourages cities to anticipate and tackle upcoming changes to their infrastructures early
- Report urges urban areas to use connected and autonomous vehicles to refocus urban environments on citizens rather than cars
- Connecting autonomous vehicles to intelligent transport infrastructures can maximize their benefit
- Greatest benefit from autonomous vehicles will emerge from capacity to provide "first and last mile" trips and help city government provide new transport services
The advent of connected and autonomous vehicles (CAV) has the potential to cause major and disruptive changes to cities worldwide, a report launched by Siemens indicates. The report "Cities in the Driving Seat" stresses the need for cities to plan early and tackle the issue in a wider context of mobility transformations. Launched today at the World Cities Summit in Singapore the study explores the interdependencies between urban development, public transportation policies, power supply, pollution and the increasing share of CAV in city traffic. Lack of mid-term planning and delayed investments in infrastructure could create negative social, economic and environmental effects, the authors from Siemens' Global Center of Competence Cities argue.
- City Air Management captures pollution data in real time and forecasts emissions up to five days in advance
- Solution simulates effectiveness of measures for improving air quality
- Siemens and Sino-Singapore Guangzhou Knowledge City plan to jointly deploy and enhance this software solution as world's first implementation
A new software solution is helping cities remedy the growing problem of air pollution and the associated lack of compliance with emission-control thresholds. Siemens presented City Air Management (CyAM) at the World Cities Summit in Singapore. CyAM is a cloud-based software suite with a dashboard that displays real-time information on the air quality detected by sensors across a city and predicts values for the upcoming three to five days. These air-quality forecasts are prepared with the aid of algorithms that tap into an artificial neural network and draw on historical and current data on air quality as well as weather and traffic patterns. Mayors and other decision-makers can then use this data and a combination of potential solution measures to derive concrete recommendations for action and define measures that help reduce concentrations of nitrogen oxides and atmospheric particulate matter.
- Memorandum of Understanding signed to target cooperation between Siemens and China's State Power Investment Corporation (SPIC)
- Siemens to become SPIC's potential partner for development of own generation of heavy-duty gas turbines
Siemens and State Power Investment Corporation (SPIC) of China entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) today to further confirm intention of technology collaboration in the field of heavy-duty gas turbines. Joe Kaeser, President and CEO of Siemens AG, and Qian Zhimin, Chairman of SPIC, signed the MoU in Berlin in the presence of German Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang during his official visit to Germany.
- Siemens Arts Program promotes outstanding young talent and awards Siemens Opera Contest France prize to Sarah Shine
The young soprano Sarah Shine is the winner of the Siemens Opera Contest France at the Opéra Garnier in Paris. Sarah Shine was born in 1993 in Ireland and completed her studies with Veronica Dunne at the Irish Royal Academy of Music in 2015. Since September 2017, she has been studying at the Academy of the Opéra national de Paris.