Autostrade spa

Mobility Applied Technological Innovation

Italian

As stated by President Giancarlo Valori, “In 1997 Società Autostrade managed to complete, in the best of ways I would say, a schedule to help it tackle the new needs arising both from the process of transformation currently involving the motorway policy in our country as a whole and from the now imminent change which will affect the private sector”.

This statement issued by the re-appointed President of the company indicates the lines that the company chose to follow throughout the past year: on the one hand, in fact, it aimed at improving both its returns and the services it provides and on the other it faced the process which will lead it to privatisation.
As far as the ways adopted to carry out the latter, Prof. Valori has always claimed that it was important for the company's sake to keep in mind the need to conceive the elimination of the public control not just as a mere cash operation but rather as a strategic choice aimed at re-launching the sector by using contributions and resources to be found within the private entrepreneurship.
Thus in 1997, the choices to be taken within a parliamentary as well as government context took into account such worries. It was decided to create a hard core of shareholders and an offer for sale on the market.
Resorting to a fixed group of partners stemmed from the need to guarantee the company continuity and solidity in pursuing the programmes that the concessionaire committed itself to respect by undersigning the agreement and its financial plan.
On August 4, 1997, in fact, the company came to a new agreement with ANAS (the national autonomous road company) whose key points were: the extension of the license from 2018 until 2038 that contributes to cover the charges deriving from the works to develop; the obligations that the company will have to meet both from a managerial standpoint and in terms of investments; the rules pertaining the tariff system; the promotion of activities and services linked to motorway services and in connected fields that can directly be run by the company or by third parties.
The extension of the license, however, represented a fundamental requirement for the company to continue to develop its projects. Autostrade's effort, by resorting to the skills and know-how of the groups' companies, consists in expressing a commitment and new projects to make its network and services provided meet European-level standards.
As far as this point is concerned, the company's goal is to make use of the technological innovations devised and developed inside the company and the group, with specific focus on mobility-applied telematics.
The company's commitment, in fact, aims at favouring integration inside the Italian motorway sector in order to make more qualified and strengthen the presence and the role of the sector itself with respect to the field's international bodies such as ASECAP (the association that groups together the European motorway concessionaires) and especially with the commissions and the working groups set up to tackle the problems pertaining transportation within the European Union.
And because it is necessary to bear comparison with Europe, made more urgent by the forthcoming introduction of the Euro, in 1997 the company further committed itself to protect and improve safety and assistance to road circulation, in other words to all those activities aimed at making journeys more pleasant on the road network of the company's arteries. In particular, the road service has been reorganised during the year; the gathering of information through the setting up of new detection spots on roads was improved to upgrade traffic monitoring. The new road system information (SIV), furthermore, was started.
This integrated system supports the control activities of road conditions and spreads information to the different information channels inside and outside the company.
Autostrade's goal consists in adapting the service capabilities of the network to the quantitative and qualitative evolution of demand and to the new connection and service needs requested by various production fields and wide areas located in different geographical parts of the country.
To meet such ends, Autostrade carried out many operations over the year (amounting to 218 billion lira in

investments) as well as the works included in the financial plan connected with the new agreement.
Thus the activities particularly linked to the design, to the courses for the approval and to the carrying out of manifold operations on the network that involved facilities and plants continued in 1997. The works necessary to complete the size of the whole company network of the Telepass service and to allow the station's automatic tracks to accept credit cards to pay toll have been brought to an end on a large number of motorway stations.
Lighting works in tunnels with technologically more advanced plants (high-pressure sodium) continued and by the end of the year they had been put in 209 tunnels on the whole.
The experimental application of new systems to signal construction yards has continued and the spots to survey weather conditions have been increased: 17 new plants have been installed and thus account for 136 spots in stations and 62 along the motorway roads.
The number of “real time” traffic survey bases (72 at the end of 1997) and of cameras used to monitor the road circulation (147 on open roads and 110 in tunnels at the end of 1997) has increased too. 1997 was certainly satisfying for the company even from an economic standpoint.
Last year, in fact, returns grew and reached a consolidated figure equal to 3,434 billion lira (+ 5.5% with respect to the previous business year).
The net profit also grew by 52% (293 billion lira, 26 of which referred to quotas of third parties compared to 193 in 1996), which shows that the “path” undertaken by the company is certainly the right one. Thus, shareholders were satisfied too as they collected a dividend equal to 140 lira for each ordinary or preference share (Lit. 110 in 1996).

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