The DOUGLAS Share

The financial crisis and its impact on the global economy dominated the performance on the worldwide stock markets in the 2008/09 fiscal year. In the wake of the global recession, share prices reached a multi-year low in March 2009. Subsequently, the world’s stock markets recovered, but without reaching their initial values by the end of the fiscal year. The first signs of a sluggish recovery in the global economy had a positive impact on the share prices during the course of 2009, which was supported by the leading industrialized nations through massive economic stimulus plans.

The German stock index, DAX, stood at 5,865 points at the beginning of DOUGLAS HOLDING AG’s fiscal year on October 1, 2008 – severely falling to 3,666 points at the beginning of March 2009. In the following months, the DAX was able to make up the losses for the most part, closing at 5,675 points as of the balance sheet date on September 30, 2009. This corresponds to a minus of 3.2 percent based on the fiscal year. The MDAX, which also lists the DOUGLAS shares, gave a better performance. The index gained 4.9 percent over the same period despite the very volatile share price development, closing at 7,359 points. The performance of the German retail stocks is tracked in the DAXsector Retail index. Following the index’s sharp drop of nearly 45 percent in the previous year, it once again fell slightly by 3.4 percent in the reporting period. The robust private consumption demand in international comparison together with a positive development of various consumer climate indicators in Germany and the low inflation impact all supported the share prices.

Stable share price performance

The DOUGLAS shares upheld the prior year’s share price level even against a turbulent capital market environment. Based on a much lower price volatility compared to the overall stock market, the shares could not, however, follow the positive performance of the benchmark index MDAX in the reporting period. The DOUGLAS shares closed on XETRA at 31.25 EUR on September 30, 2009 after starting at 32.47 EUR at the beginning of the fiscal year; representing a contraction of 3.8 percent over the fiscal year. Taking into account the 2007/08 dividend of 1.10 EUR per share, this translates into a negative value performance of 0.4 percent. On January 6, 2009, the DOUGLAS share reached its yearly high at 33.80 EUR for the 2008/09 fiscal year and recorded its yearly low at 25.62 EUR on June 23, 2009. The share price responded adversely to the critical opinions given by analysts up through the middle of 2009, which caused the analysts to fear a collapse in private consumer consumption in Germany given the uncertain overall economic conditions. Later in the year, the negative anticipations had been revised by several analysts.