TELEBORSA – INTERVIEW WITH THE FOUNDER & CEO GIOVANNI COSTANTINO
On the 8th June The Italian Sea Group celebrated its first anniversary on the Stock Exchange with a market that rewarded the title, in spite of a very difficult situation, with a pandemic not yet left behind, a war in Eastern Europe and increasing inflation and costs of raw materials.
However, Giovanni Costantino, Founder and CEO, looks to the future with great optimism and gives a glimpse of the possibility of still exceeding the set targets. An expectation fueled by great determination and his ability to have clear ideas. He talked about it in an interview with Teleborsa, exactly one year after its debut in Piazza Affari.
The Italian Sea Group is a great Group in continuous evolution. What are your main characteristics and your success factors?
Surely, great determination and clear ideas. To this, I believe a great value is added by continuous innovation.
The Company got public last year, in a very difficult context due to the pandemic, and obtained a great response from the financial markets generating +13% from the IPO. How do you valuate the listing process in hindsight and what is your future outlook?
It has been a truly intense year, we are very satisfied as our programmed vision for the listing has been absolutely achieved and it has given us what we wanted, that is an improved consideration from our clients, who are more and more important with an always wider positioning and contracts with even longer terms and even greater values.
Therefore, the safety of a kind of “certification” achieved by the listing is helping us considerably.
We had a 13% growth: we are satisfied, but not too much. This is because we have brought forward and achieved all the objectives that we had in mind and that we have communicated during the listing process; in fact, the 2021 results exceeded the Guidance.
Even more, the first quarter of 2022 has seen numbers doubling from the previous year, with a 120% increase in EBITDA and a significant growth in the Order Book which is almost 900 million Euros; most importantly, in this moment, we have confirmed the 2022 Guidance despite the terrible historical moment that we are going through.
Let’s recall the first quarter results: Revenues almost doubled and EBITDA increasing by 120%. What were the reasons behind this performance?
As anticipated before, clear ideas and being strategically protected against any development whether positive or negative. In summary, we have a management of our programs and our order negotiations are always over the production capacity.
This allows us, as it’s doing right now, to be strongly protected against possible market situations that may slow down some areas of the world.
The current situation has blocked one kind of client, that is Russians, but the activities we had in progress have allowed us to confirm our goals without any drawbacks.
You are focused on investments and on international growth. What are the most attractive and promising markets?
Obviously, international growth is fundamental for a group like ours. We continue to grow with income coming from Italy almost equal to 0, the markets that will allow us to grow significantly are certainly the US, South America, Canada and Mexico, Asia, where we started an interesting work with very significant important results, as well as the arab region.
You acquired Perini Navi in 2021, do you have other acquisitions planned? How do you imagine your dimensional growth?
The Perini Navi acquisition at the end of 2021 has been an important operation, almost a necessary one in order to give even more development than what we planned and communicated during the IPO.
The investments we made both towards an internal increase in production capacity and through the Perini acquisition with the addition of two production sites in Italy, I can say that it is enough at the moment.
We are really committed and pay great attention to the consolidation of what we have created, and we have officialised our growth, in the next three years we will grow of around 100 million Euros per year in order to reach 500 million Euros by 2024 and from here we will get new ideas. For now, we are focused on solid growth and the achievement of ever-improving results.
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