Leonardo accelerates on the digitization of Aerospace, confirms the guidance on 2021 and closes the door to speculation on possible acquisitions.
“We have the guidance, i.e. the guidelines we have given to the market, I can only confirm that we will respect these guidelines”, said the CEO Alessandro Profumo on the sidelines of the event held yesterday in Genoa where the company decided to consolidate a pole of national competence from which to develop the main programs and processes of the group.
Responding to those who asked him if Leonardo had more in the pipeline acquisitions, the manager said: "We've already done a lot of things, we don't have anything else on the horizon because it seems to me that we've already been quite active".
Profumo also answered a question on the hypothesis of a possible agreement with Fincantieri to ensure that Oto Melara technology remains of Italian ownership. "When we have clarity on what the effective options will be, we will make a choice but we cannot do it a priori solely on the basis of the nationality of the bidder", said Leonardo's number one, adding that "in the future sale of the subsidiary, the components to consider – there are many, we need long-term sustainability”.
Returning to the Genoa event, the group's objective, reads a note, is to "increase Leonardo's technological and product competitiveness by focusing on data-driven economy and the enhancement of data to strengthen the company's core activities and implement the digital transformation". Leonardo's drive towards digitization, the company explains, develops from the synergy of key skills and infrastructures starting from the so-called 'davinci-1' supercomputer. These are "strategic assets" at the heart of the Leonardo Labs, the Research and Development network focused on eight research areas and involving around 60 young researchers.
Genoa is one of the "key nodes" of the network of Leonardo's cyber security centres, which in the Ligurian capital, as well as in Rome, Chieti, Florence, Milan and Bristol, is developing "solutions aimed at protecting both corporate information assets and strategic infrastructures and institutions from multi- domain, contributing to their secure digitisation”. Another frontier is instead linked to the research activities on robotics and quantum computing of the Leonardo Labs.
