It is 10.50 on Tuesday 29 April. The air becomes electric in the sports hall of Coquelles, Pas de Calais. Here the annual Eurotunnel meeting takes place. After the official speeches, a small shareholder approaches the microphone, visibly tense, and recounts how he lost everything because of his shares bought between 1987 and 1990, when the Channel Tunnel had not yet been built. CEO Jacques Gounon tries to save the situation: "We know it's painful, but I invite you to look to the future." But the man has no intention of calming down: “You don't care about the people! You duped us with the help of Goldman Sachs!”. “We are in 2014 – replies Gounon – we cannot rewrite history”. The old shareholder is now enraged: "You have three corpses on your conscience!", He shouts, while the leaders of the group look for the security men with their eyes.
Le Monde decides to celebrate 20 years of Eurotunnel starting from this anecdote. The French newspaper recounts the lights and shadows of the tunnel in the Channel, inaugurated on 6 May 1994, through the voices of those who remember the moments of glory - the arrival in Rolls Roice of Queen Elizabeth and Mitterand -, those of those who think rather collapse of shares in the early 2007s and after, with the near bankruptcy of XNUMX, and, finally, those - joyful - of those who invested later, once the storm was over. Because, incredible as it may seem, the old bottomless pit has turned into a money machine. Forget the financial catastrophe, “today our operating margin is already better than that of LVMH!” Gounon triumphantly declares.
In reality, the level of traffic is still far from initial forecasts. In 2013, just over 10 million passengers traveled by train from one end of the Channel to the other, against the 30 million expected 20 years ago. But the number doesn't stop growing. For the first time, Eurotunnel's turnover exceeded the ceiling of one billion euros in 2013 and recorded a +8% in the first quarter of the year. Profits are still at a minimum. The company did not come out of the red before 2007 and the fire of September 2008, which made the tunnel partially unusable for six months, slowed down growth. But the net profit, equal to 20 million euros in 2013, will be multiplied by 7 in the next 3 years, according to Natixis estimates.
Eurotunnel has also started distributing dividends. From the bottom, they doubled in 2012, increased by 50% in 2013 and again by 25% in 2014. The stock is up 145% in five years and is currently at its highest level since summer 2008. , the group is now worth over 5 billion euros. And this could be just the beginning.
“At 20, we are at the beginning of a new era,” assured the company's CEO. In the short term, the objective set at the meeting is to bring the share to 11,50 euros, 17% more than the level recorded on Friday 2 May.
The financial bailout appears to have worked. In this way, it was possible to reduce the debt from 9 to 4 billion euros, thanks to the funds received from the American bank Goldman Sachs, now the largest shareholder of Eurotunnel with 16% of the capital.
And then there was the Olympics effect. Between the 2012 London Games and the British economic recovery, the tunnel has enjoyed fairly sustained growth in just a few years. In 2013, the progression was 4% for Eurostar train passengers, 2,6% for cars and 4,7% for trucks.
