• High approval rating for resolutions
• Dividend €0.65 per share
• Changes to Supervisory Board

At today´s eighth Annual General Meeting of GfK SE, between 94.03 percent and 99.99 percent of shareholders voted in favor of all resolutions proposed by the Supervisory and Management Boards. The dividend is at €0.65 per share. Matthias Hartmann, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of GfK SE, comments: “In 2015 we managed to not only meet the challenges, but also to lay the foundations for a successful financial year 2016. We increased our investments in profitable business areas and kept focusing digitizing our business.”

Overall, almost 200 shareholders and proxies, representing 88.62 percent of all shares, attended the Annual General Meeting.

Shareholders agreed to the proposed dividend of €0.65 per share for the 2015 financial year. This represents a dividend yield of close to 2 percent. The total amount distributed was €23.7 million.

As already announced, Dr. Wolfgang C. Berndt, Dr. Bernhard Düttmann, Hauke Stars and Hans van Bylen have resigned from the Supervisory Board for diverse reasons.

As successors Prof. Dieter Kempf, former CEO of DATEV eG, the Members of the Executive Board of GfK Verein, Ralf Klein-Bölting and Prof. Dr. Raimund Wildner, as well as Bruno Piacenza, Member of the Management Board of Henkel Management AG & Co. KGaA, were elected to the Supervisory Board.

“I most sincerely thank the outgoing Supervisory Board members for their outstanding efforts over many years. I look forward to working with the new members of the Supervisory Board, as they also bring significant experience and competency to the Supervisory Board,” said Dr. Arno Mahlert, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of GfK SE.

The Annual General Meeting approved the annual financial statements and consolidated financial statements prepared by the Management Board for the 2015 financial year and granted discharge to the members of the Management and Supervisory Boards.

In his speech, CEO Matthias Hartmann presented GfK’s figures of the financial year 2015 and illustrated how GfK positions itself in the fields of digitization and globalization. “Our business model combines data, digital platforms and services. Thus we create added value for our clients. In 2015 we managed to not only meet the challenges, but also to lay the foundations for a successful financial year 2016.”

In the first quarter of 2016, as reported, GfK achieved moderate organic growth and considerably improved both its income and the margin. Adjusted operating income increased to €32.1 million in the first three months of the year. This equates to an improvement of 17.6 percent on the previous year’s figure. The margin rose by 1.4 percentage points to 8.9 percent. Cashflow from operating activity more than doubled (+145%) to €46.6 million.

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