#RIPARTITALIA - Ferrari (Webuild), time-out codice appalti: cosa serve per ripartire?

The year was difficult for everyone, but overall we saw growth, thanks also to the Astaldi acquisition. Overall we close with growth of about 20% in terms of revenues and, above all, a very important figure: more than 20,000 employees worldwide. The data we see are the data that consider Astaldi consolidated only for two months and according to accounting principles, it was a year of increase in all respects. We have over 41 billion in backlog, a very reassuring element for the future. It is clear that the first half was a shock for us, as it was for everyone. We had construction sites blocked, sites in strong slowdown. We had to adopt all caution and safety measures for our workers. Touch wood, we had no fatalities worldwide among our 70,000 employees due to COVID. We currently have about 2,000 cases, but the sites are moving forward, perhaps in some cases slowing down, but moving forward.

The year started very well, I would say. Starting from Italy, we had important awards in the railway sector in Trentino, the Pedelombarda, in Sicily, and we are continuing with works started in 2020 that had been waiting for decades to start, like the Jonica highway, and we are continuing on Bari-Naples, which is another important high-speed axis. And here we see the Genoa bridge, it was a bit of an icon for everyone, also a sign of hope for the country, a sign that shows that we can do it. We obtained three continuous work shifts, working 24 hours a day. The unions reached an agreement to allow us to continue on this path.

We expect a lot, but not because it is our interest, it is the interest of the country. We take on a debt that is expanding strongly and will continue to expand because taxes cannot be increased nor spending reduced, on the contrary we have sectors where we realized we have spent certainly poorly but very little. I think of healthcare and I think again of infrastructure, I think of digital connections. So there will also be, with the help of Europe, an increase in spending. The denominator is fundamental, so GDP. It must be fueled with shock interventions that immediately restart the economy. And infrastructure is like a very high multiplier, above 1.3, and has a direct impact on employment. So what do we expect? The Recovery Fund contains only a part of infrastructure investments. We conducted a study that shows us that the situation is similar in Spain, because the allocation among the various categories obviously cannot concentrate all the availability on just one. However, the government is aware that both with the deficit and with other structural funds, because they come from Europe that we were never able to spend in the previous seven-year period, we can finance all the infrastructure we need. And here we are not only talking about large infrastructure, which as we know then involve thousands or tens of thousands of small businesses. We are also talking about social housing, we are talking about prisons, we are talking about hospitals, we are talking about everything that is needed for the country to look at the next 20 years. We have road infrastructure and perhaps we will talk later that they are obsolete, with a technical age rate that exceeds safety already for some time. Ready to do it.

I personally agree. The whatever it takes of Draghi used at the time of the 2008 crisis is obviously being used now. We are in an emergency situation, a war situation, as the head of Civil Protection also said. In these conditions we must act in emergency. What does that mean? We need to accelerate some steps. We, for example, on infrastructure, he asked why we are late? Because we haven't designed for years. The first thing that must be approved is the project. If the project doesn't exist because the design hasn't been done, years already pass. Then you can order. This on the Morandi bridge: we started with a wonderful sketch by Renzo Piano, but immediately in parallel a design company of pride of this country, Keith Hall Serra, which we are taking around the world, started and did the design in parallel. So the construction site was started and we were ready with a commissioner who gave the authorization to start with an already completed project. We need to accelerate these times, we need to have decision-making powers, concentrate decision-making powers, use projects that are ready. And it doesn't seem like an obsession of the Messina Bridge on our part, on the part of someone it is not.

Meanwhile, it is a logical thing because in Sicily they are planning 8,000 kilometers of railways and they will be built. And it is a bit curious: the services and dinners in Catanzaro with the high-speed prelate, you get off, you take the ferry because high-speed trains are not dismountable, and yet they resume. You don't want it, but especially the Messina point, a project ready, already approved by all authorities for many years. So I hear perplexities also from government officials, but if they go to see the documents they will discover that this project can start in four months. With tragedy? I remember the Minister of Ecological Transition Cingolani said: but there are problems related to the seismicity of some areas, there are also other options, other projects. I haven't looked into the dossier, he limited himself to saying without overcommitting.

That the project comes back into play, they send it to the point where, I repeat, we are relatively attached, but to give a signal to Italy that it is holding up in an emergency situation. We saw yesterday some social tensions materialize that the government had known about for some time. The risk is increasing, so we need to give very concrete signals. The concrete signal is the first sustainable thing we can do also to be consistent with the Recovery Plan and to provide work. Work and employment for thousands, tens of thousands of families is the most concrete thing that can be done, more than stories that will always be partial and always insufficient to fill the wealth gap that has been created in recent years. So we need to provide work immediately, passed urgently. Some people raise problems, but the procurement code as well as other laws safeguarded competition, which you mentioned earlier, the graticola of communications safeguard transparency. The safeguards are there anyway, EU legislation applies. We apply transparency even not only in our site e-books, but we also put cameras that monitor our sites 24 hours a day. After Genoa also on Verona-Padua, we will fight on Bari-Naples. So transparency and competition are guaranteed anyway, also because under large groups like ours there are supply chains of thousands, tens of thousands of companies that bring typology of the vuvù.

Our programs are to offer a structural solution both to Anas and to Asti and other concessionaires, that is, a framework contract within the general contractor, these are figures provided for by our code. So having a single interlocutor who handles all the tenders, all the, to tackle all the works in all the various parts of Italy's geography, in order to guarantee execution. Because a fundamental element is not starting the work, but in some cases completing it in a timely manner. Think before the holidays, think of some infrastructure that is not up to standard and that risks, has high percentages of collapse risk. We need to intervene urgently. Companies like ours are able directly, but above all by involving thousands of other companies throughout Italy of all sizes, to mobilize resources to intervene and follow maintenance plans that are the basis of the tariffs that have been renegotiated by Aspi. From this point of view, it seems to me that the real revolution is precisely this: that is, thinking of concessions for infrastructure as a strategic sector that must provide safety to those who build them and to those who use them, and not so much a debate on who owns or holds percentages of an Italian entity rather than a foreign entity, private or public. That is a step, however, that in these weeks is going through a decisive moment.

It helps me to remember that we are predominantly an international group and only thanks to the Italy project we brought the center of gravity back to the domestic market. Like all our European competitors and peers, the United States is in fact the first country for us. We do about 24% of our turnover. We have many works that are in tender, we are following many highways both on the East Coast and on the West Coast of the United States. But above all we are completing and we are close to signing a very large high-speed contract which is the Dallas-Houston in Texas. A contract for us of about 14 billion, but obviously with all the railway and ancillary part it is worth more than 20 billion. It would fit perfectly into the Biden plan. Obviously it would be financed mixed public-private and this would obviously change the weight of our group, because it would bring a good center of gravity to the United States. But our ambition is that such a project is the beginning of a new opportunity in a huge market like the American one, a structural gap now decades old that no one has been able to remedy. Very important signals yesterday from Yellen who proposed minimum taxes at the international level, because a way of financing this plan by the American administration is prog with the increase in taxes which for some sectors is a feasible path, perhaps desirable. I think of technology, I think of the giants.

At this moment we always monitor opportunities. Opportunities are concentrated on those continents where we are present and where we would like to have a stronger corporate base, as we have in the United States. So I think of Australia, where we have large construction sites worth billions of dollars in which we could perhaps have ambitions to have companies, stable organized presences. We look at skills in Italy. Now we don't do like one, there are excellences generally belonging to private families that perhaps inserted into our group could give further impetus. But I would say more than M&A, organic growth in the next three years will characterize. We have the plan that is substantially covered by backlog. If we think that we have in the backlog contracts with Libya, which Prime Minister Draghi spoke about yesterday, they could even become productive. We for the next three years first wounded by the great highway, the great highway plan that has been discussed for years, and then there were obviously the political and military upheavals in Libya. Is it ready to restart? Do you have signals in this direction? We are ready to restart. The condition that Prime Minister Draghi mentioned is fundamental, that of the truce, because we will not send our workers in conditions of non-guaranteed safety. But in this way we can restart, because as you know, that was a project also financed directly by Italy, which we would produce from our structure has always been present, ready to restart. Project already approved, so that too could be a very important tax part also for geopolitical balances.