ALSTOM’s board approved its updated Alstom in Motion 2025 (AiM 2025) strategic plan on July 4, as the company continues its integration of Bombardier Transportation.

The expanded AiM 2025 strategy, which builds on the AiM strategy adopted in 2019, will focus on capturing strong market growth opportunities and reinforcing innovation, as well as driving efficiency throughout the new organisation and ensuring the successful integration of Bombardier Transportation.

“Our AiM 2025 strategy is our answer to the historical acceleration of sustainability and green mobility need all over the world,” says chairman and CEO, Mr Henri Poupart-Lafarge. “Alstom has become the leading international rail actor in this exceptional context. This is a unique responsibility we are ready to endorse, and our focus is to offer our solutions wherever they are needed on the planet. We have a clear ambition, the most comprehensive and innovative portfolio, and highly engaged teams across the world.

“By 2025 we will have outgrown the rail industry significantly and set new industry standards for smart and green mobility in terms of sustainability, innovation, and profitability.”

Growth

The group expects a sales compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 5%, and plans to expand its global market share by five percentage points. Alstom says this reflects positive commercial dynamics along with the company’s unique position to fully capture market opportunities.

More than 70% of the group’s sales are in North America and Europe, two regions that are set to benefit from strong stimulus packages. Alstom says it also has a strong presence in emerging markets, with 11 joint ventures in China, as well as major manufacturing and engineering sites in India.

The company says it now offers a complete, high performing portfolio of rolling stock ranging from light rail to very high-speed trains, parts, maintenance and operations services, and a complete portfolio in signalling.  

Signalling and services will continue to have the fastest growth potential, and Alstom says it is aiming to be market leader in signalling by 2025. The company will benefit from its ETCS experience and its presence in strategic markets. In services, Alstom is targeting solid mid-single-digit growth.

Innovation

Alstom has reinforced its research and development (R&D), and now has more than 9500 patents and a unique scale and talent base in the industry. R&D investments is expected to reach between €550m to €600m per year in 2024-25 at around 3% of annual sales.

The group aims to have fully autonomous prototype trains for freight and passengers ready by 2023.

Bombardier Transportation integration

Alstom says the integration of Bombardier Transportation is on track and has received strong employee support and customer endorsement. Five months after closing on January 29, the product and process convergence roadmaps have been secured, and the organisation is now operating under a single unified IT system. Alstom says the combined strength of the portfolio and expanded geographical footprint resulted in around €6bn of orders in the first quarter of the current fiscal year.

Alstom has outlined an integration roadmap and timeline to complement its strategy:

  • stabilisation of challenging Bombardier Transportation legacy projects in two to three years with a strong focus on 2021-22
  • a single operating model with best-in-class converged processes and product portfolio in three years, and
  • full leverage of the significant geographical, industrial and product scale and complementarities for synergies, enhanced value proposition and growth from four to five years onwards.

Alstom says the current 2021-22 fiscal year is a transition period, focused on the stabilisation of Bombardier Transportation’s “challenging legacy projects,” which includes delayed orders to Germany and Austria. Phasing, industrial ramp-up and project stabilisation efforts are expected to result in a negative cash flow of €1.6-1.9bn in the first half of 2021-22. In the second half, the group expects to report positive free cash flow driven by increased deliveries and operations stabilisation. Overall, this should result in significant negative cash flow in 2021-22. The company expects to see yearly positive free cash flow generation towards its mid-term target, driven by progressive working capital stabilisation.