What will Sirti do for NATO
New contract with NATO in the Sigonella base for the Milanese group Sirti. All the (loss-making) accounts of the company, on which Psc (Pesce, Fincantieri and Simest) focuses
The collaboration between the Milanese Sirti and NATO continues.
Sirti Digital Solutions has been awarded for the second consecutive year the contract with NATO Alliance Ground Surveillance Force for which it will manage the maintenance of services and technological systems at the military base of Sigonella (Catania-Gela locality Lentini).
In particular, the Italian company will be responsible for the electrical, mechanical and special systems (Building Management System, Safety & Security).
We recall that since 2016, Sirti has been controlled by Pillarstone Italy, an investment company founded by Kkr Credit, which has acquired 100% of the company's capital from HIIT and Banca Imi through Ps Reti Spa.
However, the "Pillarstone fund studies the exit from Sirti" revealed in September Il Sole 24 Ore. And there would be no shortage of interested parties in the Italian company active in telecommunications. “Ready to evaluate the Sirti dossier if there is interest”, Umberto Pesce, president of the PSC group, told Sole 24 Ore last June.
All the details.
WHAT IS SIRTI SPA
Sirti is an innovation hub in the field of network infrastructure development with 40 operational offices and is active in Italy, Europe and the Middle East.
The Milanese group operates in the engineering and network systems sector. It also develops solutions for the telecommunications, ICT, energy, transport and technological infrastructure sectors.
Founded in 1921, it operates in the telecommunications, energy and digital solutions sectors with approximately 3,800 employees.
Sirti's offer is organized into four business units: Telco infrastructures, Trasportation (sold in February 2021 to Mermec of Angel Group), Energy and Digital Solutions.
TEN-YEAR COLLABORATION WITH NATO
The collaboration of Digital Solutions of Sirti with NATO is ten years old. At the headquarters of Lago Patria, which houses a military base extending over 32,000 square meters, Sirti has built the technological systems integrated with a supervision and control system together with the networking infrastructure and a technologically advanced data center to support critical NATO missions. . Sirti is in charge of the maintenance of all the technological infrastructure of the Lago Patria base until 2026.
VODAFONE, SAMSUNG AND HUAWEI AMONG CUSTOMERS
In addition to NATO, the main customers of the company include: the main telephone operators (Vodafone, Fastweb, Tim, Iliad, Wind Tre) Poste Italiane, Samsung, Huawei, Ray Way, Sky, Terna, Open Fiber and other public bodies and private.
THE SOLE MEMBER PILLAERSTONE
With a share capital of € 42,040,523, the company is controlled by the sole shareholder PS Reti Spa (Pillarstone SPV).
In addition to the chairman Davide Benello, the board includes Roberto Loiola (CEO), Michele Scibetta, Andrea Nappa, Gioia Maria Ghezzi and Gaudenzio Gregori Bonaldo.
THE NUMBERS
In 2020 Sirti closed with 733 million euros in turnover: + 6% compared to 2019. Despite the pandemic, the year was pushed by the + 20% of the “Digital Solutions” unit which reached 202 million. Energy (64 million euros, + 10%) and Transport (64 million, + 3%) also did well. Instead, the core business of Tlc closed flat (403 million).
The Milanese Sirti recorded revenues of 525,362,398 euros in 2020, an increase compared to the 502,842,328 euros of 2019. However, the financial year closed in negative with a loss of 17,335,978 euros (down compared to to 20,646,408 of 2019).
So much so that in March 2020 Sirti had started the dismissal procedure for 764 workers. The subsequent Dpcm (Salva Italia and Cura Italia) suspended the effects of the procedures until 30 June 2021.
On that date, the hypothesis of agreement on the Social Plan was approved by the employees with over 83% of the votes, thus avoiding 764 layoffs.
ORDER PORTFOLIO
The order backlog is expected to reach 436 million euros, up 9.3% compared to 2019. The backlog and framework contracts amount to 1,089 million euros, up 43 million euros compared to the previous year.
PILLARSTONE VALUES EXIT FROM SIRTI
In the meantime, “the international financial group Pillarstone would in fact have begun to evaluate the exit, and therefore the exit and enhancement, from its Italian subsidiary Sirti”, Il Sole 24 Ore revealed in September. "At the moment an assignment would not have been entrusted to an investment bank, but according to the Sole 24 Ore information for the fund it would be time to evaluate the best value for the Tlc infrastructure company".
THE INTEREST OF PSC
And there would already be an interested party in the Italian telecommunications company.
That is the rival plant engineering group PSC, 80% controlled by the Pesce family holding and the rest, equally divided, by Fincantieri and Simest.
As Il Sole 24 Ore has always remembered, Sirti was “part of the shortlist in contention for the relaunch of Italtel, a company under arrangement with creditors, an operation in which Tim also entered. In the end Sirti stopped and the other historic Italian Tlc company now sees its future linked to the PSC-Tim consortium to which the Clessidra fund is about to be added ”.
In an interview in June with the Confindustria newspaper Umberto Pesce he revealed that "he looks to competitor Sirti to create a stronger company and, once he has found interest in some form of aggregation, he says he is ready to evaluate the dossier".
THE SIGHTS OF THE GROUP LEADED BY UMBERTO PESCE
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/sirti-nato/ on Mon, 25 Oct 2021 14:29:03 +0000.