Im Gespräch mit Markus Holzke – CEO von SPIE

Yes, thank you very much for the invitation and I am very glad that we are here. Then welcome to Stuttgart. We are here in the Arena 2036, the innovation lab of SPIE. And when you look around – and we already did that during a small tour – you noticed that we are not alone here, but we are part of a research community, a research project. And here, partners from business and science come together to work on topics of the future. And for us, this is a great opportunity to work on digital and innovative topics of the future, together with our customers and business partners. Therefore, I am very pleased that we are in the middle of the action today.

So we are a so-called independent multi-technical service provider, a European service provider. And as a multi-technical service provider, we have a very broad variety of technical services for buildings, facilities, industry, energy, and communication network infrastructure. We are independent because we are listed on the stock exchange – that's one thing – as a pure service provider in our core business, but we are also independent in the technical solution. Yes, we are a pure service provider, as I said, we have no product business and accordingly we have the ambition to advise our customers with the best technical solution. We do this across the entire technical value chain for buildings, facilities, and infrastructures, from planning, through installation, commissioning, operation, to service and maintenance. And ideally, we are connected with our customers on site for a long time and then have the next projects. Yes, that's all very abstract – maybe I can just give a few examples and illustrate what kind of projects we realize.

I'll start with a lighthouse project in Hamburg: the Elbphilharmonie, which is certainly well-known, and we operate the Elbphilharmonie. That includes the entire technical, infrastructural, and commercial building management in all publicly accessible areas, but also the concert halls and the restaurant areas. If we move to the next project but stay in Hamburg, we are working together with Stromnetze Hamburg to ensure that the medium and low-voltage grid of the Eppendorf district is being renovated. That's quite complex and a great project until 2025, where we are essentially carrying out the so-called district renovation of the entire electrical infrastructure. If we look to Berlin and examine the Klinikum Charité there, this project is representative of our commitment in the healthcare sector and for over 300 hospitals we support in technical infrastructure. So we ensure that energy, heat, and cold supply run smoothly, but also that the telecommunications, IT, and security technology infrastructure is ensured. From Berlin, we jump to Frankfurt, the data center capital of Europe. Data centers are a great topic for us because they are very demanding, very technically oriented, and here we are able to cover the entire technical value chain of a data center. That starts with the planning of a data center, then goes through the installation of a data center – we can build a complete data center – and we can also operate the technical systems. But we are also present on the ground. Now let's assume we drive an electric car from Berlin to Frankfurt and we would have to charge at an Ionity charging station, and the chance is high that one of these charging stations was installed by us. So we are also a large partner for the installation of fast-charging infrastructure and its service and maintenance. On the way to the Arena in Stuttgart, if you look left and right, you see many electricity pylons, as everywhere in Germany, and that is representative of the fact that we are also market leader in the area of energy infrastructure. For example, we help the transmission system operators to transmit electricity. We build lines, we also build the associated substations, and that shows that we are a very big player in the energy transition.

Yes, growth is a good keyword. We have gained a lot of strength and size in recent years, and we also want to continue growing in the future. The potential is especially in Germany to do that as well, and the growth story is ultimately what distinguishes us but also shapes us. But ultimately, 14,000 of the 17,000 employees came to us through acquisitions, company acquisitions. And I am one of them myself. I came to SPIE in 2013 through the acquisition of Hochtief Solutions. And this platform acquisition served at that time to develop SPIE in Germany and Central Europe in the first place, with the clear approach to expand, extend, and deepen it so that we build a multi-technical service provider. We have done that for the last 8 years. And we, as a management team, ultimately had the opportunity to do that, and today we are number 2 in the market in Germany and want to continue our journey further. If you look at our business areas, we are market leader in the area of energy infrastructure, i.e., in transmission but also in distribution, and especially in distribution not only of energy but also of all media that ultimately need to be distributed in cities and municipalities. That includes electricity, water, gas, but also broadband expansion, which plays a big role for us. We are also market-leading in the area of TechFM and energy efficiency. By that we mean the technical facility management business, and here the focus is naturally on helping our customers to operate their buildings, production facilities, and infrastructure energy-efficiently and ultimately achieve their ESG goals. Yes, we have also grown strongly in building technology and automation technology; we have been able to gain strength there, but we still have potential to further strengthen ourselves regionally and in technical competence. And we have gained a visible position in the area of information and communication services. In summary, the growth story is something that defines us. I already said that in the past 8 years we have been able to win 22 companies for SPIE, to shape the future together with us. Just yesterday I had the opportunity to welcome new colleagues again, and for me that is a moment where I strongly remember the time when I was sitting on the other side of the presentation round in 2013, on those meeting chairs. And it is very important to me that we are a company that welcomes everyone at eye level, and we are proud of where we come from. The story is always different, but we shape the future together, and everyone has the same opportunities to shape it forward, just like those who are already there. Because we want to be more competitive together and conquer the future.

Yes, I think what is important for us is that we develop forward and change again and again. That is what we stand for. The acquisitions help us with that. The journey should not be over yet. In our strategy and strategic orientation, we set ourselves the goal in 2020 to double by 2025. That would mean we achieve 4 billion in revenue, but the number is virtual. It is important that we gain strength, gain competencies in the value chain, become more competitive, and that we build a company group in the sense of 'One SPIE'.

Yes, sustainability and climate protection are a central topic for us, and the central topic for our customers and our workforce. Therefore, it is at the center of what we do. As a technical service provider, and I have already described the service portfolio, we see ourselves as part of the solution for a climate-neutral future, because all our services are suitable for ultimately enabling a climate-neutral future. And we also have that audited. We are one of the first service companies to have its revenue determined as green according to the EU taxonomy. That was 42% of our total group revenue last year, and we want to increase that going forward. The remaining part of the revenue qualifies as neutral or at least with a positive contribution to the environment, a so-called net environmental contribution. This can be illustrated vividly with the picture I drew earlier of the projects we do. If you have energy generation, transmission, distribution, down to consumption, then we are present in this entire chain with our services, whether it's the installation of a wind farm, service and maintenance, or a photovoltaic park or biomass power plants, through the feed-in of energy, transmission, stabilization of the grid, distribution, ultimately to the consumers, whether it's an industrial plant, an office building, a technical facility that is operated more energy-efficiently, or energy consumption is simply avoided. So that's our business, and it is also very meaningful for our workforce. But they also expect us to look inward and improve ourselves. As a technical service provider that does not manufacture, we have few opportunities. On one hand, we have our office buildings from which our employees start to our customers, and they drive there with the company vehicles we have. So we have two main elements we can work on: one is our fleet, which is not small, and the other is our buildings. And here we have set ourselves the goal of reducing CO2 consumption by 25% by 2025, and we are on a very good path to that.

Yes, I am particularly proud of this project, not so much that we are moving our company headquarters there and moving into a great building, but that we become part of a community. A community that has set itself the goal of working for the energy transition and the mobility of the future. And the players that will later be located on this Euro Campus all want to work towards this goal, and networking is the focus there. For me, that is actually the total added value. It is a bit comparable to this research platform of the Arena 2036 for us. That means we are part of the community, we can contribute, but we can also see what others are doing and participate, and thus broaden our own horizons. At the same time, I think it is also an opportunity for us to present SPIE in a new way in the showrooms. We are very broad from left to right, and people actually know us little in the full depth of our service spectrum. We can show that there first to our customers, but also to our own employees, our talents, everything we are, and give them the opportunity to shape SPIE in the future. And besides, for those who have the pleasure of sitting there, we offer a unique environment to work and be creative.

Yes, that is a very, very important topic for us. The Digitization Report describes, for example, how we open up the topic of digitization for ourselves, how we approach it, and which cases we are currently undertaking. For me, it is very important that we never do it alone, but take our customers with us, take our technology partners and business partners with us, and define use cases that we then put into action. For me, that means there must always be a clear added value at the end. So something must become better, faster, easier, more efficient. The added value must be given beyond the project day-to-day. Of course, the Arena 2036 is a research platform for us where we can work on these topics in a relaxed manner, explore the topics, and so on. So this synergy between existing projects and such a research platform is very important for us.

Yes, well, we are all influenced by the truly terrible war in Ukraine and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. These are two influencing factors that we all feel, and they have sustainably changed us and have greatly intensified the underlying trends of the future: climate protection and digitization. The energy transition is to be pushed much faster, which of course is something that influences us very strongly and naturally enables opportunities going forward. And digitization in the same way. So I am actually quite positive about the future prospects, medium to long term. But one topic that naturally concerns us as a service provider, as a technical service provider with many employees, is the shortage of skilled workers. The demographic curve in Europe does not look good, especially in Germany it is even more disadvantageous. That means for us, a very strategic topic is being the employer of choice, every day, for our existing team but also for those who want to become part of it. I already said at the beginning that we have a culture of a technical service provider, which has total advantages, but also some disadvantages in terms of diversity and variety. And that brings us to the second topic that is very important for us in terms of modernity, modern corporate management. It is very important that we bring women into the company, that we mix, that we simply need women's power as technicians, but also at all management levels. That is our concern for many years, and we are working to become stronger there, ultimately to be more attractive for the company, but also because we believe that we can make better decisions if we have mixed teams.

Yes, when a lot of time remains to do nothing sometimes. You just – the daily routine for me is so that one thing is scheduled after another, and you are away from the family a lot. And in the family, I actually come to rest and enjoy it when the family is together, does something together, or also does nothing.

Yes, when he or she talks enthusiastically about their service for the customer. Yes, from commitment and pride.

Yes, when I see our technicians doing workshops to develop technical solutions for our customers. I would love to join in. My task is a different one, but that really makes me proud.

Yes, I also thank you, and many thanks to the Arena 2036 that we were allowed to be here. Take care, see you next time. Bye.