Dividend

Since its foundation in 1996, Fresenius Medical Care has pursued a long-term profit-oriented dividendDividendPortion of a company’s profits. The profit to be distributed divided by the number of outstanding shares shows the dividend per share. The dividend is paid to shareholders usually once a year in the form of cash, stock or tangible assets. policy. The dividend has increased fourteen times consecutively (subject to the approval of the Annual General Meeting on May 12, 2011). Over this period, the dividend has risen from €0.17 (on a comparable basis) to €0.65 in 2010. This corresponds to an average increase of 10% per annum. Compared to last year’s dividend of €0.61 per ordinary share, it rose by 7% in the year under review. Based on the proposed dividend and the closing prices of our shares at the end of 2010, the dividend yield for our ordinary shares would be around 1.5% (2009: 1.7%).

Assuming that the Annual General Meeting accepts the proposal, the total dividend payout for 2010 will be around €197 M. Given an exchange rate of $1.3362 to the euro at the end of the year under review, the total dividend works out at approximately $263 M. Based on our net income of $979 M, this represents a payout ratio of about 27%.