After the beating on the Stock Exchange, it is urgent to focus on the "core business". More than 600 million gone up in smoke in one sitting. This is the outcome of the pitched battle around the Finmeccanica stock, which today closed with a loss of 17,36%. The clash began in Piazza Affari the day after the announcement of the results as at 30 June "aided" only, on the profit front, by the partial sale of Ansaldo Energia.
A drop, in part, obvious but which still impresses with its size. But to what extent justified by the disappointing numbers (turnover falling from 8,654 billion to 8,432, adjusted ebitda to 440 million from 586, i.e. from 6,8 to %.2%)? Or does the leader of Italian technology pay the price for the judicial investigations and the climate, favorable to bearish speculation, which dominates the markets? The ingredients for a mid-summer "perfect storm" are all there: the political and social evolution of the North African countries, which have always been good customers of the group, starting with Libya; the financial crisis which affected the purchases of the main customers, namely the United Kingdom and the United States of America; the strength of the euro against the dollar. Numbers that explain the slowdown between now and the end of the year.
In fact, for the full year, Finmeccanica estimates revenues between 17,5 and 18 billion euro from the previous estimate of 18,3-19 billion. No predictions, however, on the results at the end of December: too many unknowns to take into account. A choice, that of not deciding, which influenced the downward report cards issued by Cheuvreux, Akros, Kepler and Unicredit in the morning.
But, beyond the economic situation, there are also problems of a structural nature which are under the attention of the new top management of the group.
In particular, the performance of some “non-core” sectors, the result of investments of a social nature, weighs on the fate of the group. In particular, transport (relative to the vehicle segment) suffers both from an unsatisfactory process of acquiring the order portfolio and from the low profitability of some contracts. An increasingly unsustainable situation given that, to keep up with the competition, the group will probably have to increase investments in technology which already today reach 882 million (over 10 percent of revenues). Hence the easy prediction that, in the context of the next strategic plan, the attentions of the CEO Giuseppe Orsi and those of the general manager Alessandro Pansa will be concentrated on the rationalization of the portfolio, or, in cruder terms, on the exit from the less profitable businesses of the transport branch.
Moreover, Orsi himself has already underlined in Le Bourget that Finmeccanica must "focus more on its activities, products and consequently its investments and must do so "soon", looking more strongly at international markets and leaving “the comfortable domestic markets”. That is enough with the buses of BredaMenarini bus or with Ansaldo Breda, companies that need to be privatized or in any case find another roof.
This will undoubtedly be one of the tests that will have to evaluate the sincerity of the renewed privatization instincts that emerged with the recent financial package. Orsi, also to demonstrate his independence from political parishes (see Lega) could speed up the times of decisions. The appointment, therefore, is for next autumn, when the 2012-2016 planning cycle will take shape, the appropriate forum for decisions aimed at protecting the capital solidity and the ability to cope with the competitiveness of the group without financial imbalances .
