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First Statement of Ströer after Short Attack of Hedge Fund Muddy Waters Capital (news with additional features)

DGAP-News: Ströer SE & Co. KGaA / Key word(s): Statement/Statement
First Statement of Ströer after Short Attack of Hedge Fund Muddy Waters
Capital (news with additional features)

21.04.2016 / 18:25
The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

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PRESS RELEASE

First Statement of Ströer after Short Attack of Hedge Fund Muddy Waters
Capital

Cologne, 21 April 2016 In December 2015, the US hedge fund Muddy Waters
Capital announced that they would attack explicitly European companies via
short sales. Today, their attack against Ströer had a first climax. Muddy
Waters Capital published a tendentious "report" with more than 60 pages and
addresses the business case of Ströer. The fact that Muddy Waters Capital
already highlights at page 2 of their report that the funds that Muddy
Waters Capital advice, are short in Ströer, shows clearly a conflict of
interest.

Before giving our detailed feedback to the "report", Ströer just wants to
highlight that our underlying business outlook is excellent - nothing has
changed since the last publication.

- Ströer operationally had the best start into the year in the history of
the company

- For the first quarter of 2016 we expect an organic growth rate of
around 10%

- For the full year 2016 we expect revenue between 1.1 and 1.2 EURbn and
an operational EBITDA between 270 to 280 EURm

- The free cash flow before M&A will be at least 125EURm in 2016

- Ströer announced a dividend of 0.7 EUR/per share for the FY 2015

- Next catalyst: Capital Markets Day LDN 29th April (for details email:
[e-mail]), Q1 2016 results: 12th May 2016.


Ströer is already analyzing the "report" and will rectify the matters and
misrepresentations. At first sight we can already draw the following
conclusion:
The report is far fetched, at least tendentious and overall groundless. We
note in addition, that Muddy Waters Capital never got in contact with
Ströer.

Ströer furthermore considers legal options.

About Ströer
Ströer SE & Co. KGaA is a big digital multi-channel media company, and
offers its advertising customers individualized and fully integrated
premium communication solutions. In the field of digital media, Ströer is
setting forward-looking standards for innovation and quality in Europe and
is opening up new opportunities for targeted customer contact for its
advertisers.
The Ströer Group commercializes several thousand websites especially in
German-speaking countries and around 300,000 advertising faces in the field
of "out-of-home". The Group has approximately 3,300 employees at over 70