EWE integrates infrastructure, communication, energy and data to produce innovative solutions

Oldenburg, Germany, 23 August 2018. The Oldenburg-based telecommunications and energy provider EWE is positioning itself as an innovative solutions provider and committing itself to growth through fibre-optic expansion, renewable energies, mobility, new storage solutions and energy services as well as intelligent and secure data networking. This is the outcome of the revised strategy, which the company’s Board of Management prepared together with its managers over the past few months. “For many years now, EWE has successfully combined the business fields of energy, telecommunications and IT, and is thus well-placed to exploit the opportunities resulting from the energy turnaround and digitalisation as well as play an active role in shaping these two trends. With our revised strategy, we have laid the foundations for the Group’s future focus as a provider of innovative solutions and modern infrastructure for the people in EWE’s home regions. We will thus become a service provider which realises a significant portion of its earnings throughout Germany by means of holistic services and products relating to energy, communication, networked data and mobility. EWE is one of the few German companies active at a national level that covers all of these key areas of expertise for the energy turnaround and offers them to its customers from a single source. At the same time, we are carefully monitoring developments on the markets and changing conditions – since work on our strategic direction is naturally a continuous process,” says Stefan Dohler, Chief Executive Officer of EWE AG.

Our vision: we make innovations a part of everyday life
The company’s new vision captures EWE’s soul in a single sentence: we make innovations a part of everyday life Stefan Dohler comments: “EWE’s employees examine early on new technologies and topics which are currently still some ways off. This enables them to develop innovative solutions and products at the right moment which simplify our customers’ everyday lives. For many decades now, our company has stood for change and progress in the region. It developed gas networks and brought modern electrical appliances into people’s homes when hardly anyone else saw the need for this. Much the same was subsequently true of the internet and mobile telephony. We have demonstrated the benefits of these innovations to people and introduced them to new technologies. The current trends are fibre-optic connections, intelligent meters and smarter living as well as the conservation of resources and merging the previously separate sectors of energy, heat and mobility.” EWE is supporting and driving forward these developments by means of intelligent solutions, smart orchestration of proven infrastructure, modern telecommunications networks, data and data management, renewable energies as well as innovative storage solutions. Alongside this vision, the following six areas of action are central to the company’s strategy: its customer focus and infrastructure-related service obligation, the energy turnaround and energy systems, performance and cost leadership, smart data and corporate culture.

Triad of focus, performance and cooperation
To achieve the goals formulated in this strategy, EWE will rely on a triad of focus, performance and cooperation as a first step.

Its clear focus on sustainable and viable business fields is essential in order to pool key resources such as management capacity, employee expertise and financial power in profitable and viable fields. For instance, in the area of regulated network business EWE is focusing on its Ems/Weser/Elbe and Brandenburg home regions – we operate networks here with a high level of reliability and efficiency. Intensive fibre-optic expansion and the development of market-oriented innovative services are the core aspects of EWE AG’s transformation from an energy supplier into a service provider. Energy and telecommunications sales operations are further components of the company’s current core business. EWE’s business fields of significant future strategic importance include renewable energies, mobility solutions, energy services, storage solutions as well as data-based and data-driven business. These areas will be gradually expanded and developed. “At the same time, we are looking very closely at the areas which we can continue to pursue successfully in future thanks to our competitiveness and our core areas of expertise, and also at those areas which are less promising. This will enable us to free up resources to foster our future growth. Our goal is to develop EWE to remain permanently profitable and beneficial for our customers,” says Dohler.

The current levels of profitability and performance throughout the Group are to be further optimised in order to best fulfil the expectations of customers and shareholders. This will entail a review of existing processes and procedures as well as strengthening the Group’s innovativeness and accelerating the market readiness of new products and services. “A further priority is to leverage additional synergies between the Group’s various business areas and functions and, above all, to release our employees’ capacity for innovation,” Dohler remarks. “Over the past few months, I have got to know a large number of highly-qualified, dedicated and innovative employees – it is essential that we foster their commitment and utilise this to ensure our joint success.”

Accordingly, the future cooperation within the Group will transcend individual companies even more frequently, enabling employees to work together in a more digital, agile and integrated manner. “With this goal in mind, we are quite deliberately encouraging a new form of togetherness while no longer aiming to do everything on our own – instead making use of partnerships in order to round off our competence profile where appropriate.”


Statement from the EWE Supervisory Board and EWE-Verband

The Board of Management of EWE AG presented the new corporate strategy to the Supervisory Board at its most recent meeting and discussed this in detail.

Bernhard Bramlage, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of EWE AG, comments: “The Supervisory Board supports the strategic alignment described by the Board of Management, which will enable EWE to assert itself amid the current shift in the industry through the energy turnaround and digitalisation.” There is a consensus within the Supervisory Board that the changes associated with this transformation must now be developed through a close dialogue with the Group’s employees and Works Councils and with the trade union.

Heiner Schönecke, Managing Director of EWE-Verband, emphasises:
“EWE-Verband has likewise closely examined the revised corporate strategy and will support the continuing process of implementation through its committees.”