Market growing strongly: Group roadshow for new bond issue

MILAN, September 19, 2023 – “Recruiting and training workers are strategic activities so that Italy's infrastructure development plan can continue at a fast pace. The Webuild Group is working on 31 major projects in Italy, with some 16,300 people already working, and it aims to hire another 9,500 workers and office staff in the 2024-2026. Just in 2022, we hired 15,000 people, of whom 40 percent were under 30. It is a huge effort both in finding them and training them. But it is of the utmost importance in order to modernise and make Italian infrastructure more sustainable. So it can seize the best opportunities on the market, the Group is organising a roadshow with investors to assess the issuing of a bond to refinance its debt.” 

Webuild Chief Executive Pietro Salini made the comments at the conference "Un’immigrazione dignitosa dall’Africa per il lavoro e il futuro dell’Italia" (A dignified immigration from Africa for work and the future of Italy), organised by Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and E4Impact Foundation, of which Letizia Moratti is President. The Group has been present in Africa for almost 70 years and is among the founders of E4Impact, a foundation that aims to train and develop African entrepreneurs whose goals will have a strong social impact, create jobs and offer solutions to the challenges faced by their respective countries. E4Impact also promotes alliances among African universities, while generating partnerships and commercial relations among African and European companies. 

“The Webuild Group that presents itself to the market to renew its deadlines is profoundly different compared with how it was in previous years. During the last three years, we doubled the backlog, and improved its quality, thanks to the engagement of a quality supply chain in Italy that comprises 10,500 businesses since work on its projects began. Webuild is near reaching €10 billion in revenues, all the while maintaining a solid net cash position. We improved our rating to BB with a stable outlook, with 80% of the backlog in developed countries. With a greatly diversified order backlog, we are not dependent on any single client. For example, only €9 billion of our order backlog, which amounts to 15% of the total, are linked to the PNRR (National Plan for Recovery and Resilience). We have renegotiated some major contracts, which will ensure a good level of profitability.  The market is booming globally, and we are adopting a more selective criteria in selecting our projects. We have room to improve our margins thanks to economies of scale and our operational efficiency." 

“Businesses in Italy are searching for over 530,000 people, and almost half of these are very hard to find,” continued Salini. “The infrastructure sector requires increasingly more specialised workers. This is why Webuild has been investing for years in professional training, in a culture of safety and innovation, for all those wishing to work in a growing sector like our’s: new generations, the unemployed, and all those with a desire to reposition themselves in the workplace, including immigrants, refugees and prisoners. In just five years, from 2018 to 2022, we issued over 2.8 million training hours.”

As a large company that is part of the system, Webuild is active on more than one front with regards to training. From its "Scuola di Mestieri" (Trades School), a professional path that merges theory and real life experience on a construction site alongside Group managers – even making use of new "immersive" training methods with 3D virtual reality simulators, or managerial training programmes, scholarships and talent attraction for the young. The Group also promotes R&D collaboration partnerships, with an Open Innovation perspective, just like the UniWeLab in Genoa. Other activities include the recently signed agreement with the Arma dei Carabinieri regarding corporate security and legality, and one with the Dipartimento dell'Amministrazione Peniternziaria, which aims at offering job opportunities to prisoners.

Salini also focused on the epochal transformation that Africa is living today. “The continent has overtaken Asia in becoming the main source of population growth. Four of the eight countries that will account for more than half of the population growth up to 2050 are African. Among them, Nigeria by 2058, which could have more inhabitants than the entire EU. This is why an efficient and shared immigration management between Europe and member states is strongly needed. It is essential to support companies in training foreigners to provide everyone – and not just the already employed – with a basic knowledge that is essential to ensure safety on construction sites.

In addition to the actions being carried out in countries where immigrants travel, "it is necessary to train people to create the required skills in the countries of origin, driving lasting growth and stabilising migration flows," concluded Salini.