"The continued high order growth underlines the confidence of our customers in the performance of our company. However, there is still a lot to do to achieve leading margins in all businesses," said Joe Kaeser, President and CEO of Siemens AG, at the 53rd Annual Shareholders' Meeting of Siemens in Munich. This also refers to the declining profit.

In figures this means: In comparison to the same quarter of the previous year, adjusted order intake (excluding currency translation and portfolio effects) rose by 13% to EUR 25.172 billion, while adjusted sales revenue increased by 2% to EUR 20.116 billion. The reasons for the good order intake are major orders. These include increases in the majority of industrial businesses, led by strong growth in Mobility and double-digit percentage growth in Energy Management, Power and Gas as well as Process Industries and Drives.

In the Mobility business division, several major orders are mentioned, with an order worth EUR 1.6 billion for subway trains in the UK and an order worth EUR 0.8 billion for trains, including service, in Canada being the main reasons for the strong order situation.

In the Digital Factory division, incoming orders in the automation businesses are almost on a par with the previous year. Sales revenue increased in all businesses, with double-digit growth in China worth mentioning.

Process Industries and Drives also recorded a strong order intake. This was driven by components for wind turbines.

Strong order backlog, halved profit

Siemens has a record order backlog of 137 billion euros. The book-to-bill ratio is 1.25.

Adjusted EBITA Industrial Business fell primarily due to declines in Power and Gas and Energy Management. However, the decline was offset by higher adjusted EBITA in Process Industries and Drives and Digital Factory.

Profit after tax fell from €2.211 billion in Q1/2018 to €1.118 billion in Q1/2019. Siemens attributes the sharp decline in profit from continuing operations and profit after tax to the high level in Q1/2018, which included the "Osram share sale and significantly lower tax expenses mainly due to a positive net effect of €437 million from the revaluation of future tax positions in the course of the tax reform in the USA". If these effects were not taken into account, the "profit from continuing operations and profit after tax would remain at the same level as the previous year".

Rising dividend

The actions of the Management Board and Supervisory Board for the 2018 financial year were also approved at the Annual General Meeting. The shareholders also approved the proposal of the two boards and increased the dividend for the fifth time in a row. It thus rose by 10 cents. A dividend of EUR 3.80 per share will therefore be distributed.