We are delighted to come back to you after the summer break. Welcome to our new issue of NewsEuropa, which aims to tell you what is happening here in Europe. Since the arrival of the pandemic with severe health and economic consequences, the key word has been in Europe, as in the rest of the world, “Crisis”. In Chinese language, the word “Crisis” is made up of 2 characters. The first character “Danger” represents a man on the edge of the precipice…The second character means “Opportunity”.
At the macroeconomic level, OECD provided recently the actual growth rate for the first half. In Euro zone, minus 3,6% in Q1 and minus 11,8% in Q2. Germany handled the situation pretty well with -2% and -9,7% respectively. Outside Euro zone, UK shows the blow with -2,2% in Q1 and -20,4% in Q2.
Since the release of the spring confinement economists have been wondering how the recovery will go. For this, they declined the alphabet: no recovery with L shape? Stagnant recovery with U shape? Recovery with intermediate relapse with W shape? The answer, according to Peter Altmeir, German Federal Minister for Economic Affairs, is a strong V shaped recovery, showing a vigorous chart. This knowing that the sanitary measures will last a long time yet. On closer inspection, it seems more and more obvious that we face a K shaped recovery. The crisis is Darwinian, there are winners, benefiting from it and …losers.
Good news for us, most of the winners are in the Tech sector, our industry. A recent case raised our attention in StartEuropa as this company really educated the market to SaaS. Salesforce (HQ in the USA, Revenue $21 bn, Market Cap $242 bn, 20% of revenue share in Emea) is the CRM and Customer Experience world leader. Last Monday, August 31, it joined the Dow Jones list, replacing Exxon Mobil. On Tuesday it announced record Q2 results, gaining a stock surge of +25% and the day after it informed that it would layoff 2% of its workforce to streamline its business. It reinvented during the crisis, “reimagined its relevance”, designed 2 products “Work.com” and “Salesforce Anywhere”, that the company was able to sell immediately thanks to its comprehensive sales network and deliver everywhere thanks to SaaS. The layoff shows it wants to be rigorous in management. Seize opportunities while being rigorous in management. Opportunity and Danger avoidance, it seems to speak Chinese.
Anthology of recent IT related European public communications that we have scanned for you:
Accenture (IT Professional Services, HQ in Ireland, Revenue $ 38 bn, Market Cap $ 150 bn, 34% in EMEA) realized a new report “Bold Moves in Tough Times”. According to the study, two-thirds of business leaders globally are optimistic that the European market will make a relatively fast recovery from the economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. “Confidence is critical in the current economic environment, which is still volatile and uncertain,” said Jean-Marc Ollagnier, CEO of Accenture in Europe. “Europe’s business leaders must start reinventing themselves for the post-COVID-19 world today,” Ollagnier said. “Now is the time to think and act differently and take balanced risks to build long-term resiliency and to renew growth models to adapt to what we call a ‘never normal’ world, by increasing the pace and scope of digital transformation, continue to work on the end-to-end customer experience and leveraging technology to reinvent the industrial sector”.
Roland Berger (Strategy consultancy, HQ in Germany, Revenue $800 million, private, 75% in EMEA) indicates that the 3 current winning trends are the digitalization of processes, omnichannel and work from home.
Jean-Pierre Clamadieu, chairman of the board of Directors of ENGIE (Energy, HQ in France, Revenue $72 bn, Market Cap: $34 bn, 80% in EMEA) can see the light at the end of the tunnel and says that European companies have to work differently. Some progress is impressive, for instance, 40,000 ENGIE employees jumped on work from home in just 24 hours.
UBS (Bank, HQ Switzerland, Revenue $30 bn, Market Cap $44 bn, 34% in EMEA) notes that the big winners on the stock market are until now the mastodons of technology, the mega caps. UBS believes now that the trickle-down will hit other tech players. It finds that the pandemic has accelerated the adoption of disruptive technologies. It recommends then that its customers invest in players positioned on digital transformation, automation and robotics and which will benefit from the 5G.
SAP (Software, HQ in Germany, Revenue $ 33 bn, Market Cap: $ 187 bn, 44% in EMEA) is the largest European company software vendor. The European Commission inked an agreement with SAP to develop and build a gateway platform for cross-border exchange of COVID contamination alerts. The interface will be able to operate with at least 18 applications, already planned or developed by European countries. In the first half of the year, SAP’s news was mainly marked by the departure of its Co-CEO, Jenifer Morgan, just 6 months after her appointment. The other Co-CEO, Christian Klein becoming the sole CEO. This summer, SAP announced its intention to IPO Qualtrics, purchased only 2 years earlier. Turbulence on the governance side and big question of its acquisition strategy, which clearly goes against what Oracle or Salesforce do.
Cap Gemini (IT Professional Services, HQ in France, Revenue $17 bn, Market Cap: $24 bn, 60% in EMEA) is one of the largest European IT company. It announced growth in H1 revenue (+8,2%) thanks to the acquisition of Altran. Its new CEO, Aiman Ezzat became the 3rd CEO of the company, where he spent his whole career, serving as CFO in his last position. In 2019, the share of Cloud and Digital revenues exceed already 50%. With the acquisition of Altran, Capgemini wants to become the leader in Intelligent industries thanks to new expertise in electronics and telecommunications. Ezzat explained also that after the wave of offshoring (mostly in India), IT Professional Services sector will have to face the shock of data automation and artificial intelligence.
In summary, at StartEuropa, we see 3 main ideas emerging with the crisis and its two attributes, danger and opportunity:
The first is that leaders have to manage the business well and continue to gain resilience.
The second is that the crisis is starting to see the arrival of new teams, which know how to hold the bar in stormy weather. They will have to position themselves in the first months of governance and launch the necessary changes.
Third, more and more European decision-makers are convinced that they will have to invest in technology. The digital transformation and the technology leverage are top priorities in their agenda.
The set of questions for each of you is now as follows:
How to access new minded decision makers?
How to take advantage of the renewed opportunities of the European market, without weakening financially your company ?
How to capture turnover in a region where you have no or little presence, in order to balance the revenue geographical risks, without spending a fortune by setting up heavy field structure?
At StartEuropa, we offer you a judicious way to address the continental European market, by mitigating risks thanks to our model which is essentially based on success.
We are willing to contact you in the coming days to explain how to proceed.
Let's set up by email a zoom meeting, we still have few slots available next week.