To reach as expected "economic balance" at the end of the five-year period in 2022, the SNCF plans to sell assets, announced the CEO of the railway group Jean-Pierre Farandou in an interview with Paris Match, published on Thursday.
In the spring of 2018, the strike had reduced SNCF's profit from 1.5 billion in 2017 to 141 million euros. The Prime Minister then announced in May 2019 a future “golden rule” to prohibit “excessive debt”, speaking of an SNCF with “economic equilibrium” before 2022, in return for the resumption of part of the SNCF Réseau debt by the State.
Nearly 700 million turnover lost
Regarding the strike which has lasted since December 5, “even if we still have to measure the impact more precisely, this is not good news. The starting point of the trajectory will be degraded ”, recognized Jean-Pierre Farandou. "Will we be able to turn the corner? "He asked himself. “For the operating margin, it will be difficult. But we could regain the expected balance by controlling the debt, including by carrying out asset disposals, ”he added. If it is "still premature" to say which ones, "we can revisit our portfolio and see what can be sold in the coming months," he told the magazine.
Regarding the cost of the strike against the pension reform since December 5, “there is first the direct cost of the activity that we did not carry out, all the tickets that we did not sell, all the tons of freight that we haven't transported. This amounts to around 20 million euros per day, ”said Jean-Pierre Farandou. "We will soon exceed 700 million in lost turnover," he lamented.
"We know our image is damaged"
“On the TGV (…), we are hopeful that travelers will return massively. Customers who were unable to travel have been reimbursed, ”he noted. On the provincial TER on the other hand, "people organize themselves differently for their regional journeys, by car-sharing or by taking the bus" and a part may not return to the train, according to him. "Then we know that our image is damaged," lamented the CEO of SNCF.
In a letter to the secretary general of the CGT federation of railroad workers Laurent Brun, Jean-Pierre Farandou had ruled Tuesday the situation "serious" and "worrying for the company". "A company and its employees never emerge unscathed from more than a month on strike," he said. SNCF management considers it premature to quantify more precisely the financial impact of a conflict which is still not over.
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