Aeronautics: too much "uncertainty" to avoid layoffs, according to Akka France - France 24

Paris (AFP)

"The uncertainty" which weighs on the future recovery of the aeronautics sector has made inevitable the plan of job cuts of the engineering group Akka Technologies, estimated Thursday the boss of the French subsidiary on BFM Business.

"The big difference with the 2008 crisis is the uncertainty: we do not see what will happen in the years to come", explained Paolo Del Noce.

Akka Technologies announced on Monday the loss of 900 jobs in France, most of them in Occitanie.

"We have customers who are talking about a return to normal in 2024, others in 2025," he added.

Akka Technologies (21,600 employees, including 7,600 in France) provides large industrial groups with engineers to work on their research and development projects and their engineering programs.

Aeronautics and the automotive industry are its main clients.

"The stoppage of air transport has caused major aeronautical players to put a large part of their development projects on hold," said Mr. Del Noce.

"In the third quarter, we lost 50%" of our turnover with aeronautics, and "what we see for next year is a continuation of this trend at -50%" in aeronautics, he added.

Faced with the fall in demand, Akka is accelerating the switch to digital skills of its engineers with training programs, and has also launched its own research and development projects for future "technological bricks for the planes of the future", Mr. Del Noce said.

"All these measures will, I hope, lead us to further reduce" the number of job cuts, which were initially higher, he said.

In the first half of 2020, Akka recorded a net loss of 57.4 million euros, with sales down 20.3% over the period.

In the third quarter, sales continued to decline sharply, with a decline of 20.4% (-28.9% organically).

The group listed on the Paris Stock Exchange announced Thursday evening the finalization of a recapitalization of 200 million euros subscribed to 75% by the Compagnie Nationale à Portefeuille (CNP, family Frère), and up to 25 million by the family group of founder Mauro Ricci, which retains control of the company with 51.91% of the voting rights.

The group also announced on Thursday the departure for health reasons of Nicolas Valtille, its deputy managing director who was responsible for all support functions (finance, administration, legal ...).

© 2020 AFP