(AOF) – CGG today announces the appointment of Jérôme Serve as Group Chief Financial Officer. Jérôme will succeed Yuri Baidoukov who decided to leave the company for family reasons. The handover between Jérôme and Yuri will last until Yuri’s departure on March 31, 2023. Since 2019, Jérôme Serve has been CFO of the Interior division of Forvia/Faurecia, where he co-steered the development of new growth activities such as the intelligent cockpit, in a complex macroeconomic environment.
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Key points
– World leader in geosciences;
– Sales of $949 million, 80% of which come from the Geoscience branch and the rest from the Multi-client and equipment divisions;
– “People, data, technology” business model: sustainability of the group through positive self-financing whatever the market conditions thanks to “asset-light”, reinforcement in activities with strong self-financing generation, balance of balance sheet and availability and diversification in the energy transition;
– Split capital, Sophie Zurquiyah being general manager and Philippe Salle chairman of the 11-member board of directors;
– Balance sheet in the process of cleaning up with net debt reduced to $812 million, ie a leverage effect of 2.1 and $417 million in cash at the end of June.
Challenges
– 2025 strategy for transformation into a technology company, with leading positions in basement imaging, cloud, data mining, sensors and acquisition systems: annual revenue growth of 13%; turnover split between monitoring & observation for 37%, digital science for 35% and energy transition;
– Innovation strategy at the source of 30% of annual turnover, boosted by R&D accounting for 11% of turnover, focused on computing power;
– Environmental strategy with 2 deadlines, 2030 and 2050: 50% reduction in CO2 emissions (vs 2020) then total neutrality / increase in the rate of use of renewable energies to 50% then 100 (vs 30% in 2020) / efficiency of energy use / launch of credit facilities aligned with ESG criteria;
– Strengthening of the monitoring & observation division through the acquisition of Geocamp and the software activity of ION;
– Impact of investments in computing capacity and in “Beyond the care” activities (HPC & Cloud solutions, Data Hub) as well as partnerships in hydrogen and decarbonization.
Challenges
– Favorable impact of the resumption of exploration by oil companies;
– After a 14% increase in turnover, a return to operating profitability and a break-even net profit on 1
er
semester, 2022 objective: 10% revenue growth, operating margin of 39 to 40%, €310 million and industrial and R&D investments of around €70 million;
– Abolition of the dividend.
Find out more about the “oil and para-petroleum” sector
Biogas to green activities
Obtained through the decomposition of waste, it falls into the category of green energy. It is part of the strategy of many countries, particularly in Europe, to reduce their dependence on hydrocarbon imports. The oil groups have strong ambitions in the field, as revealed by two recent operations. The British BP took over the American Archaea Energy for 4.1 billion dollars. Then, the Anglo-Dutch, Shell, announced the acquisition of the Danish Nature Energy for 2 billion dollars. These transactions show high valuation levels, underlining the strong potential of the sector. TotalEnergies had already taken a stake in the American Clean Energy Fuels Corp in 2018, of which it now holds 19%. It recently joined forces with Veolia to recover biomethane from waste treatment facilities.