The SNCF continues.
For the third consecutive year, the railway group with a turnover of 41.8 billion ended the financial year in profit.
The net result, for 2023, stands at 1.3 billion euros.
“Excellent news”, greets the CEO, Jean-Pierre Farandou, but very far from the record of 2.4 billion euros reached in 2022. “We demonstrate with these profits that we are a serious, solid and resilient group.
We are reinvesting almost everything in rail, to buy TGVs, build or modify workshops, and support the effort to regenerate and modernize the network.
These good results are for the benefit of the French and the territories,” underlines Jean-Pierre Farandou.
This significant difference of 1.1 billion euros is explained, firstly, by a decline in Geodis' performance.
After two years of outperforming, thanks to the rebound in global activity after the health crisis, the logistics company is “returning to a certain normality”, management is told.
In 2022, the group had also sold assets (subsidiary, real estate, etc.), for a value of 800 million euros, when, last year, its sales were eight times lower.
“If we remove this 700 million euros difference, our operational performance is comparable,” notes Laurent Trevisani, strategy and finance director.
350 million losses linked to strikes
It would have been equivalent without the losses of 350 million euros caused by successive strikes during the pension reform.
However, SNCF Voyageurs - "the locomotive of the group", points out Laurent Trevisani - recorded an increase of 10.4% in its turnover over the year, driven by the "train appetite" of the French, a hammered formula at will by management.
TGV ridership increased by 6%, in France and Europe.
Transilien activity increased by 6%, 7% for regional TERs and 5% for Intercités.
SNCF Voyageurs also benefits from the 5% increase in ticket prices on average.
In 2024, the railway company plans a new price increase, below inflation, forecast at 2.6%.
These results whet the appetite of certain union organizations, determined to reopen salary discussions, with compulsory annual negotiations (NAO) deemed “insufficient” at the end of last year.
“This 1.3 billion is the fruit of the work of all railway workers.
The CEO of SNCF has no choice: he must open a new salary negotiation very quickly,” warns Julien Troccaz, SUD Rail general secretary.
“It will be difficult to seek more, given that the results, which we all expected to be around 2 billion euros, are lower than expected,” tempers a union official from a so-called “reformist” organization. .
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For its part, pressured by the massive strike of controllers during the last holidays, management has already agreed, in mid-February, to issue a value sharing bonus of 400 euros, in addition to that of the same amount granted in anticipation of these good results.
“The wage bill has increased by 1.5 billion euros in the space of three years.
No other company in France has done so much to protect the purchasing power of its employees, points out an informed observer.
We will not be able to grant much more, at the risk of calling into question our financial balance and our financial performance.
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The SNCF will have to maintain positive results in the long term, and even develop them, while a “mountain of investments” is looming, according to the terms used internally.
The group will largely contribute to the 100 billion euro plan for rail, announced a year ago by the government.
TGV, cash machines
Another envelope will swell from year to year.
It concerns the contribution to the competition fund to finance SNCF Réseau, responsible for the maintenance and regeneration of the rail and funded by the group's results.
“There is a duty to achieve results, and we must work to activate different levers to improve financial performance,” underlines an informed observer.
The company needs to make money.
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The main lever is based on TGVs.
Already profitable, SNCF Voyageurs aims to become the group's cash machine.
Firstly by “optimizing” its activity and reducing the weight of loss-making lines, in addition to practicing a “dynamic” pricing policy.
Added to this is a development of the offer thanks to the arrival of TGV M, which consume less energy and are capable of transporting more passengers.
Conquering traffic in European countries, in this case in Spain and soon in Italy, with Ouigo, also constitutes another avenue for growth.
The whole should make it possible to achieve a rate of profitability greater than 20% from 2027, when it is barely 15% today.
Clearly, the French have not finished finding the train expensive.