KION : Speech of CEO Rob Smith

Annual General Meeting

of KION GROUP AG

Wednesday, May 29, 2024

____________________

From the speech of

Rob Smith,

Chief Executive Officer of KION GROUP AG

(Check against delivery)

As of May 22, 2024

Seite 2

Dear shareholders, dear partners, dear friends of the KION Group.

Welcome to our Annual General Meeting - also on behalf of our more than 42,000 employees. Our world is characterized by major changes and challenges. At the same time, there have never been so many opportunities for a company like KION to prove its relevance to the economy and society in this environment.

Let me start by talking about the challenges. Geopolitical tensions are rising, disputes over trade routes are escalating - this is threatening global supply chains. Disrupted supply chains mean that goods no longer arrive on time and reliably. This has an impact on production, consumption, prices and jobs.

We all feel the consequences of this uncertainty and volatility. This is exactly where we at the KION Group come in. Digitalization, automation, sustainability, and urbanization are megatrends that are shaping our industry. And make new things possible: We are closer to our customers, we have better processes, our products and solutions are better and our environment is more protected. At the KION Group, we are ready to seize these opportunities.

I would like to explain three key points of our strategy:

Firstly, we are investing in our core businesses. This enables us to gain market share and strengthen our customer loyalty.

Secondly, we are reducing our costs. This enables us to improve our efficiency and increase our margins.

Thirdly, we invest in innovation. This is how we secure our future by driving digitalization and improving our sustainability.

2023 was a good year for the KION Group. We systematically implemented our strategy. We have significantly improved profitability in both our operating segments and at KION. This significant progress shows that the commercial and operational agility measures we initiated in 2022 are leading to sustainable business development.

Now to the key figures of the financial year. We generated consolidated revenue of € 11.4 billion. This was a slight increase of 2.7 percent year-on-year and the highest revenue in KION's history. We also made strong gains in profitability last year. Adjusted EBIT showed a very strong increase to € 791 million. This is an increase of 170 percent compared to the previous year. Our adjusted EBIT margin thus improved significantly by 430 basis points to 6.9%.

Our consolidated net profit also improved significantly to around € 314 million. Particularly noteworthy is the excellent free cash flow result, which reached € 715.2 million. For comparison: in 2022, we still had a negative free cash flow of € -715.6 million! The value of KION Group's order intake decreased by 7.1 per cent to € 10.9 billion.

Seite 3

You, dear shareholders, shall also benefit from our good results. As far as the dividend is concerned, we are proposing a distribution of 70 cents per share today. More than a threefold increase! - As a reminder: in the previous year, 19 cents per share were distributed. This proposal corresponds to a total dividend payout of € 91.8 million. In the previous year it was € 24.9 million. The payout ratio amounts to around 30% and is therefore within our target payout corridor of 25% to 40%.

Our Industrial Trucks & Services segment was a key driver of our good results at Group level. The segment's total revenue increased significantly by 15.3% to € 8.5 billion year-on- year. Improved material availability and a general stabilization of global supply chains had a positive impact. And we have done our homework: we have significantly reduced the number of risk suppliers and gained new suppliers. Our price increases in the previous year also contributed to the increase in sales. The service business also achieved good growth of 7.5 percent.

Adjusted EBIT in the Industrial Trucks & Services segment improved significantly to € 849 million. This is a doubling compared to the previous year! Firstly, the volume- and price- related revenue growth had an impact here. Secondly, our efficiency improvements in production had an impact. Thirdly, the stabilization of our costs. As a result, the adjusted EBIT margin grew significantly last year to 10.0% and was once again in double figures.

Order intake fell by just under 10% to 242 thousand vehicles due to the subdued market dynamics. We saw a normalization of the market, which has returned to the long-term trend. Incoming orders fell by 6.4% compared to the previous year to € 7.9 billion.

Let's move on to our Supply Chain Solutions segment. At € 3.0 billion, total revenue at SCS was 21% down year-on-year. In addition to project delays, the decline in revenue was due in particular to the subdued order intake in the project business in recent quarters. Our customers are currently hesitant to invest in major projects. This is due to geopolitical uncertainties and increased capital costs. By contrast, sales in the service business increased by 7.9% and made a good contribution to revenue with a share of 34.9%.

Adjusted EBIT in the SCS segment was positive again in the 2023 financial year at € 44 million. We increased the adjusted EBIT margin to 1.5%. The reasons for this improvement were firstly the measures initiated in the previous year to increase profitability, secondly the improvement in project management and thirdly the growing share of higher-margin customer projects and service. The value of incoming orders in the segment fell by 9.8% to €

3.0 billion in the past year. Ladies and gentlemen,

You have seen our key figures for 2023. What were the drivers of our success? We have taken measures to improve operational and commercial flexibility. We have made our prices more dynamic. We have developed additional suppliers worldwide. We have improved our

Seite 4

project management processes at SCS. We have built price adjustment clauses into our multi-year SCS contracts to protect ourselves from hyperinflation. As you can see, we have accepted the challenges. And we have shown that we can overcome them successfully.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I am very proud of our KION Executive Board team today. Mike Larsson is our new President of KION SCS and ITS Americas. Mike has over 30 years of experience in industrial automation and is a strong team player - also because he has played and coached ice hockey all his life.

CP Quek is the new Chief Technology Officer of KION, in addition to his role as President of our ITS APAC business. CP brings the Voice of the Customer to our CTO team. And he has proven over many years that he knows how KION can prevail against the strong Asian competition. CP is also a strong team player and is well known and respected as our longest serving Executive Board member at KION.

Together with our Chief Financial Officer Christian Harm, our Chief People and Sustainability Officer Valeria Gargiulo and our President ITS EMEA Andreas Krinninger, we have optimized our structures and built a strong Executive Board team.

The future of KION depends to a large extent on our research and development. KION creates fully integrated solutions for automated, sustainable warehouse systems. That is why we invest around three percent of our revenue in research and development every year. And we have a strong CTO organization with around 2,800 colleagues worldwide.

I will now show you a movie about an innovation we are working on with partners like Google:

Film "Project ARIBIC / Google Maps of Intralogistics"

We are proud of our teams working on such pioneering projects.

In addition to research and development, the KION Group invests in top talent and locations worldwide. In recent years, we have launched a new truck family for the global market at our plant in Jinan, China. Now we are further expanding our site in Jinan with a new plant for the Supply Chain Solutions segment. More than 300 new jobs are expected to be created there by the end of this year.

At KION North America, we are investing in new production and assembly lines at our ITS segment plant in Summerville, South Carolina. Once opened, we will create around 450 new jobs there.

And in Aschaffenburg, Linde Material Handling opened its state-of-the-art Experience Hub in fall 2023. The new customer center allows us to host everything from product demonstrations to large customer events and functions.

Seite 5

KION also invests in sustainability. In July 2023, the KION Group committed to achieving the 'Net Zero' pledge of the Science-Based Targets Initiative (SBTi). And we are helping our customers with their growing demand for green solutions. Let me show you three examples of our progress in sustainability:

Film "Sustainability"

In fall 2023, the leading index provider MSCI raised the KION Group's ESG rating to AAA. This puts us in the top 10 percent of the industry. And in February of this year, S&P Global included the KION Group in its Sustainability Yearbook for the second time. Thirdly, we were able to underpin our leading position in terms of sustainability with an 'A-' rating in the CDP Climate Change Rating.

Ladies and gentlemen,

We created positive momentum in 2023, which is also reflected in our outlook for 2024. For 2024, the Executive Board of KION GROUP AG expects a slight increase in consolidated revenue to between € 11.2 billion and € 12 billion. We expect a significant increase in adjusted EBIT compared with 2023 of between € 790 million and € 940 million. We anticipate a slight increase in return on capital employed (ROCE) of between 7.4% and 8.8% compared to the previous year. Free cash flow in 2024 will be positive, but below the high level of 2023.

In the Industrial Trucks & Services segment, we expect a slight increase in sales to between

• 8.5 billion and € 9.0 billion in the 2024 financial year. We anticipate an improvement in adjusted EBIT for ITS to between € 850 million and € 950 million and another adjusted EBIT margin in the double-digit range. In the Supply Chain Solutions segment, the focus remains on strengthening operational resilience. Due to the lower order backlog at the end of 2023, we expect SCS to generate revenue of between € 2.7 billion and € 3.0 billion in the 2024 financial year. We expect a noticeable improvement in adjusted EBIT of between € 60 million and € 120 million.

Ladies and gentlemen,

We have a clear strategy, a strong position and see great opportunities. We have a broad and competitive range of products and solutions that cover all of our customers' requirements. We have a global presence that allows us to operate and grow successfully in all major markets. And we have a highly committed and qualified KION team that gives its best every day.

KION is more than just a company that produces forklift trucks and automates warehouses. We are about the future - about technology and sustainability. We are about innovation - algorithms that optimize routes and predict demand. KION is the company that coined the term "lights-out warehouse". We have a great responsibility to our customers, our employees, our shareholders and our society. We take this responsibility very seriously. I am

Seite 6

proud of what we have achieved so far. And I am sure that we will achieve much more in the coming years.

Thank you for your attention.

And with that, I hand the floor back to Hans Peter Ring.