Vigilant but confident. In our concessions, the fundamental need for mobility should keep traffic at a healthy level on our motorway networks and gradually push it back up to normal throughout VINCI Airports’ network. However, not all our airports will see their passenger numbers reach 2019 levels in 2023, as flights in Asia only started picking up recently. Our order books in Energy and Construction remain very full, with a good balance between flow business and major projects. That being said, as the economic environment is looking uncertain and will probably be more crimped than in 2022, we will focus more than anything else on protecting our margins, to stay on our long-term growth path. This is ingrained in our DNA: our resilience is practically built-in, not only because our business model is solid but also because our decentralised structure and our management are exceedingly responsive. We show this year after year.
Precisely: we see all the long-term potential in our business lines when we look at them through the prism of the big challenges we are facing. The issues around energy – and the crisis unfolding today is a reminder of the vital role energy plays – are spurring deep transformation. This transformation is spreading across our Energy business and beyond it to the rest of our activities. However much their budgets tighten, central and local governments will need to invest considerably in the energy transition, to massively develop infrastructure to produce and distribute low-carbon electricity, to transform the built environment or to usher motorways and air travel into the low-carbon era. Beyond the energy transition, we are also seeing that practically everything we do is changing ever faster – housing arrangements, how we work, how we produce, how we live in cities and regions, how we travel short and long distances, and so forth. All these shifts are brimming with long-term opportunities for all our companies.
We have embarked on deep transformation ourselves. This transformation is similar in scope to the one that the 20th century’s momentous technical breakthroughs brought about in our lines of work. The difference, today, is that progress first and foremost means preserving the planet. We are channelling our innovation potential towards this overarching goal. The ambitious commitments we made when we started rolling out our new environmental policy at the beginning of this decade are now our new frontier for all our business lines. This is making us rethink and recast our design and production processes and our products, services and solutions around two objectives: reducing our own environmental footprint and helping our customers and infrastructure users reduce theirs. The momentum is incredibly powerful and our teams are rallying around it. It is already giving rise to many initiatives, and tangible progress, in our companies. Cutting carbon emissions in construction, reusing materials, using recycled materials, driving electric vehicles on our motorways, gravitating towards net zero emissions at our airports, working with communities and industrial customers to lower their energy consumption and shrink their carbon footprint, bolstering resilience in cities and developing green surfaces to provide a cool island effect, pledging to seal less land in our property development operations: those are a few examples of what real life looks like in our business lines nowadays. The environmental transition is also becoming our central focus in our innovation and foresight hubs, where we are working alongside academic partners and startups to turn today’s experimental leads into tomorrow’s green solutions.
They are both intimately linked: the environmental transition will not go far, or fast, unless we pay more attention to the social dimension. The sea changes happening today also carry the risk of fraying social bonds. So we have a duty, now more than ever, to be a company that stands for inclusion and solidarity. This has led us, for instance, to step up our integration programmes for young people: we are now leveraging our strong local presence to substantially scale up the learning and apprenticeship programmes we offer them. Our outreach through our network of foundations in about 15 countries stems from the same eagerness to fulfil our role as a socially responsible company, by caring for the communities around us as much as we care for our employees.
We are living in absolutely fascinating times! Our business lines make more sense and are more useful than ever in the face of the challenges our societies need to tackle. We have the resources – the technologies, the people, the finances – and the managerial energy to be a driving force in the renewal of the built environment, infrastructure, industrial plants and processes, and mobility. We want to forge a sustainable world, while serving a useful purpose and caring for the planet. It is an ambitious and inspiring journey, and most of what lies ahead has yet to be invented and accomplished. This is precisely what makes a group like ours so modern.
