ALAS Group – Executive Summary Q1 2021
April 15th, 2021.
Economic downturn and low growth continues to threaten global businesses and markets. While the worst appears to be behind us, many challenges are still clouding the horizon as a result of the coronavirus and the current global recession. There is a sound basis for a rapid economic recovery, however, this all depends on how long the crisis continues to influence the global financial markets. There's still great uncertainty about the economic development, which may be significantly stronger or weaker than our forecasted projections.
We have taken numerous steps to mitigate our operational risks, by strengthening the Group’s operational resilience and core businesses. This includes reducing some of our low-yield activities in specific parts of the world, taking the necessary actions to improve our overall performance and longer-term profitability, by f.x. aligning capacity to market needs. We have explored several new opportunities within our corporation, enhancing our capabilities across the ALAS Group branches, including our financial position.
Looking at the Group’s largest business area, our aviation and aerospace division, 2020 was a difficult year with massive cutbacks throughout the global supply-chain. The continuous lockdown restrictions and market uncertainties, made it difficult to adjust the corporate structure over a short period of time, matching day-to-day market fluctuations, plus maintaining a satisfactory financial performance level. The sudden downturn in the travel industry forced us to change our normal operational practice, focusing more of our business on cargo than actual passenger movement. However, with the number of vaccines increasing daily, we hope to see a positive change in the operational structure around July or August, with more passengers wanting to travel, together with lighter restrictions.
With the current developments in the travel industry, we remain optimistic and still expect to see slight improvements in the global market throughout the 2nd quarter of 2021. Especially our pax services will slowly begin to accumulate revenue as the recovery in the industry gathers momentum, and we see a higher activity level among travelers again.
Looking at our green-tech developments, we are continuing to grow our renewable business in Southeast Asia, together with key stakeholders from the public and private sector, increasing our PPP (Public Private Partnership) footprint in the region. Expanding our renewable capabilities will play an increasingly important role for the Group in the future, accumulating experience and knowledge in the field of green technology and innovation, plus intensifying the company’s sustainability profile and our global green-to-market approach.
In conclusion to the above, the first 3 months of 2021 has shown a relatively stable performance level throughout the Group’s industrial branches, showing positive signs of the corporate changes made in Q3 and Q4 of 2020. We have specifically focused our attention on the immediate future and short-term goals, and managed to adjust our corporate structure to meet changing economic and business challenges. We have scaled our global operations to meet market-specific requirements and goals, in terms of profitability, service quality and the overall global competition. We believe these are all positive changes regarding the direction of ALAS Group, however, the situation remains fragile until the financial markets have stabilized considerably.
Dustin Paul Wilden
Chairman of the Group