Stellantis: new profits and old vices?
Stellantis flies towards boom profits for the whole of 2021, but Tavares is not satisfied and puts the Italian plants under fire again in which the redundancy fund is still the master. Fabio Pavesi's article for the daily newspaper
Stellantis flies towards the goal of at least 15 billion euros in operating profit, estimated by the company and analysts, for the whole of 2021. If so, it would be a year to be framed for the CEO Carlos Tavares and the shareholders, first of all the Exor of the Agnelli family with 14.4% of the capital. The booming accounts of the first half, communicated the day before yesterday, with revenues of 75 billion and an operating profit of 8.6 billion seem to fully endorse the objective. It will be enough to replicate this dynamic in the second half of the year and the game will be done.
And so the new auto giant, born from the merger between FCA and Peugeot, leaves Covid behind and above all goes to place itself, in terms of profitability, at the top of the ranking of large manufacturers such as Toyota and Volkswagen. It was not easy to predict such a round result, after that, in 2020, FCA had seen revenues drop from 108 billion to 86 billion with a drop of 20% and PSA losing revenue by 14 billion. As always, the North American market, which FCA brought as a dowry to the new entity, took the lead. Peugeot for its part donated to Stellantis an operating profit almost double compared to FCA with an Ebit (Earnings before interest and taxes, ed) at 7% of revenues, while FCA was still at 4.3%.
The marriage on an economic and financial level seems to really work, given that now the target is aiming for an operating margin above 10%. A huge leap given that only at the beginning of the year Stellantis foreshadowed operating profits of between 5.5 and 7.5%. But faced with so much wealth produced, Carlos Tavares seems not to be satisfied. He remarked the day before yesterday that Italy is in his sights. “In Italy we have started a constructive dialogue with the trade unions and almost everyone has understood the extent of the energy transition that Stellantis is going through. We explained that if we keep the status quo we get into trouble. We must reach the CO2 emissions targets, it is a must. Accelerating electrification increases costs by 40% which must be amortized. We are in the right direction, ”he said.
That phrase about the sharply rising costs for electrification that will be amortized means making cuts elsewhere, after Stellantis has committed to producing batteries at the Termoli plant . After all, it is not the first time that the CEO of Stellantis raises the issue of the situation of the Italian plants of the group considered inefficient and too expensive. And coincidentally, in our country, from Cassino downwards, there are many plants in which social safety nets are used in 2021, such as the rotating redundancy fund. A document from the Fim Cisl explains how employment in Cassino has already reduced by a thousand units in the last year and a half and 500 workers are on layoffs every day. In Pomigliano too, 35% of the more than 4 thousand employees are on a rotating basis. And yet another cash session has just ended in Mirafiori.
The Fim Cisl document also recalls that if in the first half of 2021 the productions in Italy grew by an average of 64% compared to the first half of 2020, they are still down compared to the pre-Covid season. The decrease in the cars produced in the Italian plants is 20% compared to the first half of 2019. Plants still therefore underused, with first FCA and now Stellantis that slavishly propose, as the only solution, the use of social safety nets and therefore public aid. Old habit of the Agnelli house that persists even with the new Franco-Italian owner. And this also in the boom year with those 15 billion in operating profits that Stellantis promises to make. Profits rain, accompanied by robust layoffs. Without forgetting the loan guaranteed via Sace by the Italian state for 6.5 billion euros. Even the new profit machine that is Stellantis does not miss the public help.
Article published on ilfattoquotidiano.it
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/smartcity/stellantis-nuovi-profitti-e-vecchi-vizi/ on Sun, 08 Aug 2021 13:28:03 +0000.