after good results in 2021, 2022 promises to be a pivotal year for the company’s accounts

Now halfway through his term of office, which runs until 2024, will SNCF CEO Jean-Pierre Farandou succeed where his predecessors struggled so much to achieve results: namely to clean up the group’s finances in the long term? railway? The results of the public company, unveiled on Thursday, February 24, are encouraging from this point of view. Despite the health crisis, the public company generated a profit of 890 million euros in 2021, which contrasts with the 3 billion hole dug by the Covid-19 in 2020 and the loss of 801 million euros in 2019 (mainly linked to the strike against pensions). 2021 turnover increased by 15% compared to 2020 and it is now only 1% of its 2019 level. As for the operating margin, it improved by 2.2 billion.

Above all, SNCF is on the way to meeting the objective set by the 2018 railway reform. The goal is to achieve, from this year 2022, a positive cash flow at group level, then to do the same in 2024 at the level of the SNCF Réseau subsidiary, which has hitherto been structurally loss-making. In other words, the public rail group is about to stop generating debt mechanically. This would be a first since the reunification of the transport activity and the network activity in 2015: the SNCF could become, from a financial point of view, viable over time.

To understand this positive mechanism, let’s take a closer look at these accounts which are not easy to read because they are full of hidden elements. First, there is apparent bad news. The profit displayed is misleading because it was due to the sale for just over 1 billion euros of a subsidiary, the wagon rental company Ermewa. The recurring result, reflecting the real economic activity of the group, is in fact negative at –185 million euros, as is the cash flow (–700 million). But, the good news is that the improvement of these indicators is continuous, in particular this famous figure of the cash flow which hovered desperately around – 2.5 billion in 2020 and 2019.

“The year 2021 has been split in two, explains Laurent Trevisani, director of strategy and finance for the SNCF group. The first half was still very marked by the pandemic, but the return of customers to the TGV from the summer enabled us to generate positive cash flow in the second half. It is really encouraging. Given this performance, I am convinced that we can reach the point of equilibrium over the whole of the year at the rate planned by the State, that is to say as of this year. »

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