Again good morning to you. We have something very interesting here. I know Benedetto almost 25 years. He used to work with a ship micro ship company called RS Electro, and we did a project in Bahrain with E, which under it is Italy, and then another company called Terrmecanica. So one of them for the power station, the other one for the refinery. And he was supposed among the people to be the project manager, but unfortunately he loved that company, stayed with him over 25 years until he was hit by Ferrari. So I was expecting him to be like me, so my heart inside is a red color hat. Okay. My watch. I have a pen also red, old Ferrari. But he came with my classical suit, you know. So we'll have a nice session. A few questions to know the story of Ferrari. But I will start with his profile and history. Please.
Thank you all to be here. We organized this well, Friday evening. Friday evening. I was coming back from the US. That's the impossible, you know. Friday evening basically we organizing the weekend, also we found a slot to show you one of our latest forms. To arrange something, I, yes, I was working at a different company, was working in a different world, and for 25 years I was dealing with clients whose product is on the table. Now I had the luck to work with a fantastic team with whom we started up a new business from zero to more than $6 billion per year. We sold 50 billion sensors that are fitting in all your phones. I remember when I was going around and I was proposing these technologies, and people were telling me there is no market. In fact, there is no market. There are 20 sensors for each home, and after that we've been going in many other different fields, from cars to space, healthcare, industrial. But after what happened in this quarter of a century, more and more the final client started to treat the semiconductor people as a slave. What does it mean? You own the application, and you tell the semiconductor chip maker what they have to do. And I did not feel well because I like to be a little bit more creative. So I found, and I was lucky, because I was proposed to this job that I'm doing now, where I can with the team, we can be creative, we can be innovative, and we can use the technology thinking to the emotional side of the people. Because when you talk about high-tech, it's more transactional, it's more utilitarian approach. When you talk about a product such as Ferrari, well, Ferrari is a product emotionally useful, it's not functionally useful. And then I felt a little bit more, let's say, I recovered it. My wife said, 'You were a black and white picture. Now you are again a colored picture.' So the problem of the air changing, but she also said, okay, you are changing world since... said that I am... it's five years I am in. I'm very happy because I can know a lot of people from all over the world, and dealing with the final clients in the B2C, B2B, I found it nicer, more growing for me from a personal and professional point of view. So I took also this opportunity to come here because I could know people from the different network, most of I know a few of you, maybe two, three. So that's the reason why I took this opportunity when Adi proposed me to come here to have this conversation.
So what is the first thing you did when you joined Ferrari?
I can tell you that when I arrived in Ferrari, I had in my life I had good teachers, and I remember one CEO telling me, 'Look, the first thing you have to do is you need to talk to the people.' So when I came in Ferrari was September 1st, I took for myself 100 days to talk to 300 people. It was N minus 1, N minus 2, because I think that the best consultant of the strategy, the best consultant of the way a company is working are the people inside the company. So what I was doing, I was asking the people in 1-hour open discussion, and the question was simple: 'If you were in my shoes, what would you do to improve the way this company is working?' And after getting all this feedback, and I can tell you there were people who never talked to the CEO before. For me it was an easy job. Without their feedback, I wouldn't have been doing the things I did. I changed the organization. I made it flatter. There were nine organizational levels; from nine I went to five. And none of those changes I took. The test drivers, the people that are testing the car, if you want, these are the first clients that tell how the company is behaving. They were deep below the CEO, and I moved them up because better than engineers, these people understand how the car behaves. I like always to say that if you want to do innovation, technology is important, no doubt, but the client is more important. You have to put yourself in the shoes of the client and rethink the way the product you're doing is used. Enzo was not an engineer. Enzo was a racer. Steve Jobs was not an engineer. He was a person that started from the final application. So that's what we keep revealing. Technology is important as far as it addresses the real needs, or even better it delights, anticipates what the client is waiting for. It's not easy. Sometimes we make mistakes in our life, but it's important that you recover fast. What is important is that a leader has the responsibility to... and to bring the flag of innovation forward. I did it in my previous business life with the chip because we created a computer market, and I'm doing it here. And in both cases, I'm lucky because I have a very good team of people.
So what are the main challenges you're facing in Ferrari?
I would say that there is one main challenge. We need as a company to continue to put together two dimensions: tradition and innovation. We need to be relevant for the current generation. We need to be relevant also for the next generation. I was looking, I was listening to the presentation, your first lady.
Sorry from C. Yes. Sorry.
I made a mistake. Cared was saying something about Italy. Let me think about that. We have 61 UNESCO...
World heritage. Worldation. Okay.
Italy. Italy. I'm talking as Italian, must value the past but must invest also in the future. Any company has the responsibility to value the past and to invest in the future because if you value only the past you live in a museum. If you work only in the future you disrespect the work that many people did before you. So the challenge is to make sure that our company stays relevant also for the generation to come. A company that does is not afraid to put together these two dimensions. And here maybe I can take the opportunity why we... when he offered us opportunity to bring a car, he asked to bring a car, I said let's bring two cars: one that is more on the traditional path I see, and one is on the way forward, because we have two offers, we have a responsibility to offer different kind of cars for different clients that have different needs. And I think this is really the, if I have to pick one challenge, it is this one. We cannot live in a museum, we cannot live in the future, we have to put them together. It is all about innovation, sustainability, prosperity, humbleness, and the last, talk about it, humanity, helping the people to live a better... So I'd like to talk with you about this. I think you touched three important things: sustainability, innovation, and humanity. In my career in the previous job, I had the opportunity to work with several brands, very strong. I got to grow business from zero with those clients to several billion dollars per year. One of the problems that usually strong brands, one of the risks that strong brands usually have is very simple. They become... a company with a strong brand is like a person that is successful. And usually when you have this situation, the ego of the person or the ego of the company does become too strong and they become arrogant. That means they don't listen anymore to what is happening around. When this happens, something important is happening. The suppliers... two things. The people in the company, you think that they know everything, so they don't listen. The people around the company, for example, the suppliers that are very important for innovation, they do not, they are not anymore in love with you. They do the job for you because they are paid. They don't put anymore the love and the passion. And when you have this situation, you are not anymore innovative. I know it. I experienced it myself in my life. You need to be in love. You need to do more than what you are paid for. And this is true when you are in the company, when you work for a company. So this is important for me at this point. The company is successful not because of only the people in the company, only a few people in the company, because all the people, people today use this nice name, you know English, stakeholders. Stakeholder means that all the people around you contribute to innovation. All the people around you are the guardians of the brand. All the people around this, in this case the Ferrarists, are the people that make this possible, this marriage between the past and the future. And in this, since the beginning, we have been caring a lot about sustainability. I'll tell you a few things that for me are very rare. First of all, I like to say that the green is black. Green is black because the bottom line here on the right side of the P&L can be also black, not necessarily red. And how do you do this? I'll tell you a few things. You know that today in Ferrari to make the car we make, and the number of cars has been constantly increasing a little bit because we want to be exclusive. The emission of CO2 from our operation has been cut by a factor of two in four years, and we aim to continue to cut it by the end of this decade. So if you see the 2030 over 2022, we will have cut it by factor 10. How did we do it? We listened to the operators. We cut the waste of aluminum. 1,000 tons of aluminum that was thrown away. We challenged ourselves. People were saying you cannot use recycled aluminum because of the wise the engine or whatever. No, it's not true. We challenged it. If you come to Maranello, you don't see anymore any primary aluminum. You see recycled aluminum. We reduced the waste consumption, the water consumption. We reduced energy consumption. We installed fuel cells. We installed solar panels. To cut the story short, by the end of this decade, we will have 10 times less emissions from our own operation, and we will cut by 25% the emissions that are coming from our suppliers. So access that means listen to the signal around you. Innovation and sustainability they need to work in a, I would say, in a virtuous cycle. That is important. That's what we are trying to do. Sometimes we make mistakes, but it's important.
