Siemens raised financial targets and announced its first share buyback since 2015 as the German industrial giant’s new chief executive officer pivots towards software to boost shareholder returns.
Siemens will buy back as much as three billion euros (S$4.81 billion) of shares over a five-year period starting from 2022, the Munich-based manufacturer said on Thursday in a statement.
The company also hiked targets for revenue and profit over its three- to five-year business cycle with an expected boost to earnings per share of just under 10 per cent annually.
Digitalization, automation and sustainability are growth engines for our business,” CEO Roland Busch said in the statement accompanying Thursday’s capital markets day. “As a focused technology company, we want to strengthen our position in all our markets. Siemens said it’s targeting acquisitions to break into “highly attractive” new markets “adjacent” to its existing businesses that offer as much as 120 billion euros in potential revenue. In May, the company agreed to pay US$700 million to buy supply-chain management firm Supply Frame Inc that provides intelligence on factory outages and material-cost changes.
