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TWST: Can you please give us a brief overview of the Wienerberger AG (WBSV.VI)?

Mr. Melzer: Today, Wienerberger is an international building materials group. We are the largest brick producer worldwide plus we are holding strategic piping and roofing investments in Europe, Asia and in the U.S. We were founded in 1819 in Vienna and started listing on the Vienna stock exchange in 1869, but the internationalization and expansion process was only started in 1986 -- only 16 years ago. In 1986, we had only 11 plants in Austria. Today we have approximately 230 plants in 27 countries, so it was a very rapid expansion process. We are number one in hollow blocks (clay blocks) worldwide. We are number one in facing bricks for facades in continental Europe, and we are number two in facing bricks in the United States. We have five strategic business segments. The core business is the brick business, which covers three of these segments: one for Central and Eastern Europe, one for Western and Northern Europe and one for the United States. The fourth strategic business unit is our pipe and roofing investments. Here we have put together all of our joint ventures. There are four joint ventures involving "Pipelife" plastic pipes, "Steinzeug" clay pipes, "Bramac" concrete roofing tiles, and "Tondach Gleinstaetten" clay roofing tiles. The fifth strategic business unit covers real estate and a few other minor businesses. It accounts for less than one percent of sales and less than one percent of capital employed. It’s the remaining real estate holdings that we have and that we are going to sell over the next five years. The value of this segment, nevertheless, in these real estate holdings is approximately $160 million euros.

TWST: Would you care to discuss Wienerberger’s current strategy in order to maximize any growth potential in these markets?

Mr. Melzer: The strategy is to concentrate on bricks. We consider bricks our core business where we have excellent positions -- mainly number one in all major brick markets in Europe and the U.S. The target here is to maximize the cash flows in the existing business on one hand, and on the other hand, to expand the market positions further. We also want to increase our market shares wherever possible and to enter new markets in Eastern Europe. These markets include Romania, where we already have a trading business there but we are now investing in a plant. Another possibility for further growth is Russia, which is a huge market, and might be the next expansion step in 2003. The pipe and roofing investments are joint ventures, which I explained here. These are joint ventures where we intend to optimize our cash flows via dividends. The target is to dissolve the joint venture structures. Dissolve means we would like to either acquire the maturity or sell our holding. Although, we have no time pressure to dissolve the structures. Within our real estate and other businesses division, we intend to sell the non-operating assets over the next five years. Why over the next five years? Because we have to use losses carried forward in order to make it tax efficient.

TWST: Is there anything specific on your agenda over the next year or so?

Mr. Melzer: There might be the market entrance into Russia in 2003. It’s not really decided yet, but it is a project. The rest is that we want to focus mainly on Eastern Europe -- further growth in Eastern Europe where we already have quite high exposure and the best earnings levels within the group. We have excellent margins in Eastern Europe in comparison to the other markets. Just to give you a feeling for that, we generate 20 percent of our revenues in Eastern Europe but 30 percent of our EBITDA. One thing we should not forget to mention that makes us an attractive investment is the solid business that we are in. The brick business is a very solid one – proof being our EBITDA of more than 200 million euros in a restructuring year after restructuring costs. We also have an excellent dividend yield, which we want to provide to our investors. It is currently over 4%, and the policy isto keep it above 3.5 percent over the long-term. So an investor has two possibilities: the possibility to immediately generate cash with the dividend paid plus capital gains via possible share price increases.