Bufo (Iren): "Una bolletta non pagata azzera il margine di dieci famiglie"

With a great dilemma, no, of how to actually valorize 100 years of history, because then Iren is true, it was born in 2010, when, let's say, the Piedmontese part came together with the Ligurian, with the Emilian, and so Iren technically was born in 2010, but before with many aggregation processes or with a lot of development history, actually there were companies also here in Genoa from the early 1900s or from the end of the 1800s and they were in those periods where, for example, the first dams were built in the Alps to then enable with a vision by those that were called the municipally-owned companies, no, and that at the local level people perhaps called them the Company, no, with a capital C, because they were those companies from the beginning of the 1900s that actually enabled that way of living with the urbanization trends in those cities that were being born, so with then a whole country context of those who knew how to bring to the country level gas from around the world through Europe or the seas then also to Italy, who knew how to electrify the entire country, no? However, at the local level, these companies like those that gradually made up Iren, dealt with distributing water, collecting it, purifying it, or distributing the last mile of electricity or gas in cities where in the 1940s there was still lighting, no? 4060 gas lighting was not electric lighting in the streets, and distributing electricity, collecting waste, treating it, or getting into separate collection, circular economy, or producing electricity starting from dams at the beginning of the 1900s and exploiting the morphology of the country that was endowed with mountains, because try to make a hydroelectric basin on the hills of the Apennines, the water flows a bit little and also collects less because there is no snow, no snow in winter, no? And so there is this complexity of a historical baggage where time flowed with a speed probably much slower than today, but they were eras where one had to look very far, that is the dams of the early 1900s began to produce around the 40s. That is, a dam is designed, built, it's not done in 5 years, in 10 years. So the first Libyan gas that arrived here in Italy arrived precisely in those years, around 2000, 2006 down in Sicily. But the project to bring Libyan gas to Italy by those who took care of it, obviously a large Italian company, was born in 1973, that is, the beauty of more than 30 years. So this historical heritage, this ability to see far, this DNA of being in the territories to enable and progress life, no, in cities, territories, catching the initial long-term trends, no? Division, there was need for electricity, need to treat waste, because today if we go around the world there are still many realities, many countries, let's call them third world, but where waste is seen abandoned and burned, period, that is, it's not collected, no? And so these eras where one had to look far, then the world progresses, we get more or less to our days or when Iren was born in 2010 or in this 2026 the speed is much greater, the world is much more complex, you can't think only of your country, as Paolo was saying earlier, no? A crisis breaks out in Hormuz and we are all here dealing with it, no? Even if they are fighting, it's not that it was a particular crisis of an earthquake, no? there are two fighting, two, three fighting and we all deal with the consequences. And so in these eras even Iren structures itself, is born by listing itself through its companies that had listed and so also the concept of profit is not a, profit sometimes always has a negative connotation, no? Especially when it goes through companies that could be public or still today, no? we have almost half of the shareholders that are the founding municipalities of those companies of that time, even if we are overall listed. Profit is the ability to see also towards shareholders a return of value, but to provide oneself with not only operational capacity of vision, but also financial, economic, operational discipline itself, because the world we live in and the eras we come from have required many investments. One does not aim to have the last line of the income statement in useless, in black, and on the other hand another thing that generates cash from the cash flow statement already starts badly because the trades we do, as Paolo was saying, require huge investments and if one is not organized with a profit logic, it's a flash in the complexities of the cities we live in to make mistakes, and then the things we do here, also here in Genoa, will last for the next 40-50 years.

Yes, but without losing, without losing. This is a bit my experience of these 11 years in Iren. I came from another company that could not be defined territorial, no? I always tell that when I arrived in Iren my office was on the fourth floor, no? Right here in Genoa, no? In our old mythology of the floors of Santi, Giacomo and Filippo, no? And I came from a company with the role I had, where I always had offices, in the last years in double digits, on the 10th, on the 11th, hmm, and here I understood in Iren there were no buildings with more than seven floors, no? And so there wasn't even the office of the administrator for the commercial part that could go on the 10th or 11th, but I understood it because we have deep roots in our territory and so also the logic of listing and profit, but we continue to maintain a territorial imprint, an ability to go and provide services for our territories in an era where beyond listing, profit logic, financial metrics, etc., we cross those trains of sustainability or evolution, geopolitics, digitalization, all these increasingly global, increasingly fast trends, but they were called maybe not like that, now talking about sustainability, but it was the same thing we did at the beginning of the 1900s. The same thing when we started collecting waste, especially in the Emilian part, and beyond collecting it to maintain urban hygiene of the cities, we started developing techniques for separate collection, waste treatment, to give new life to paper or mattresses, no? rather than to glass or chips and transistors, etc. So here, these are concepts of sustainability where the logic of profit, the logic of being a structured, listed company helps, but with feet firmly in our territories, and with the hope, I would say also the pride, of continuing to do it for another 100 years, in short. Well, sure. And then the issue of profit, if a public company or anyway owned by municipalities makes a lot of profit and redistributes to the municipalities, obviously without fleecing users, because otherwise it just shifts, no? But if the municipalities are richer and can do more things also thanks to the good work of the companies.

The first great moment of shock, no? great moment of shock because then in the public imagination it's clear, no? There are moments where more is assigned to a sector, no? Think of banks, no? Rather than now the global big tech, no? They say, 'But they are certainly doing something with our data, they don't pay taxes, no? In the public imagination, no? there's always someone to point the finger at. But our companies, our companies when especially they deal with gas to buy and sell energy and to produce electricity and sell electricity, but that gas they buy it.

It's not that we have it under us that you say 'You know there's electricity?' And I assure you that the margins that we make, that we make.

A large client that doesn't pay. No, but let's not forget the large, large clients. If families, a family that doesn't pay a bill, a bill, it destroys the margin I have from a year of bills from 10 families.

And it's evidently a problem of a sector. All the difficulties that one sometimes has in speaking, so also having an ability to help, to grant installment plans, etc., and this applies to many other things. In these days we are fresh on many territories, at least those where we manage waste collection, the tariff adjustments of the TARI, no? Of the TARI. Then there are seasons where there are also tariff adjustments of water tariffs, but these are disciplines regulated by the Italian authority for electricity, gas, environment, water, waste, etc., but they are mechanisms where one invests agreeing on the need and type of investment, so it's not that one invests like this in treatment plants rather than in separate collection systems, in automatic bins. To the company that invests, a return is granted that is 6%, 7% and one must also keep operating costs efficient and every year try to reduce them by efficiency. But it is clear that if we are in phases here for example in Liguria, we are in a phase where in the next 5 years, in the last two, finally the time has come when the territory has understood that it is time to build treatment plants. Oh, now stop right there, stop right there.