Revenue and earnings forecast

We believe that the global economy will continue recovering in 2011 even though some economic risk does exist. We originally budgeted for growth of 3% to 4% and assumed that the international trading volumes relevant for our business would exceed this growth by a factor of 1.5 to 2. We continue to expect our revenue to increase more or less in line with our forecast medium-term growth rates of 7% to 9%, especially in the DHL divisions, with the increase pertaining to each of the three divisions.

In light of our good performance in the first half of the year, we anticipate that consolidated EBIT for full-year 2011 will reach the upper end of the range we already announced this spring of between €2.2 billion and €2.4 billion. This encouraging trend is being driven by all divisions. The DHL divisions' EBIT is expected to be in the range of €1.6 billion and €1.7 billion, whilst the MAIL division is expected to contribute €1.0 billion to €1.1 billion. At around €–0.4 billion, the Corporate Center/Other result should be on a par with the previous year.

We are maintaining our finance policy in 2011 and plan to increase capital expenditures to no more than €1.6 billion after having increased it to just under €1.3 billion in 2010. Following our corporate strategy, we are focusing on organic growth. We anticipate only a few small acquisitions in 2011, as in the previous year. In 2011, cash flow will be impacted by the restructuring measures resolved in 2009 to a much lesser extent than in previous years.

Provided that the global economy continues to recover, the positive trend in our earnings that we are anticipating for 2011 is likely to continue into 2012. The cost reduction measures and growth programmes initiated in the MAIL division are expected to stabilise EBIT even if traditional physical letter volumes continue to decline slowly due to electronic substitution. We expect EBIT to improve in the DHL divisions at an annual average of 13% to 15% until 2015 as trading volumes continue to recover.

The mark-to-market measurement of certain financial instruments required under IFRSs in connection with the Postbank transaction will be reviewed at the end of each quarter until early 2012 and adjusted if necessary, based on the change in the Postbank share price. Any adjustments made will not impact liquidity and will be reported under net finance costs/net financial income. To a large extent, this impact will be negated by offsetting changes in the fair value of the remaining shareholding in Postbank. Consolidated net profit before effects from the measurement of the Postbank instruments is expected to continue to improve in 2011 in line with our operating business.