Acciona looks to future

At its recent annual general meeting, the Spanish contractor Acciona outlined its strategy for sustained growth, which included selective bidding for projects, leveraging the company’s technological and financial competitiveness, and earmarking €1 billion (US$1.12 billion) for investment in 2017.

With the company’s focus on selected growth opportunities, coupled with its move into new markets in renewables and infrastructure, José Entrecanales, chairman of Acciona, said, “We are interested only in profitable growth.”

Maintaining its strict policy on returns and risk management when analysing new projects, the company intends to focus on markets where it is already established, such as the US – where it will bid for infrastructure projects – Chile, Mexico and Australia. The Spanish contractor will also focus on countries in Southeast Asia where it has no presence but opportunities exist.

In addition, Acciona will give priority to internationalising its service business.

The company also announced that it had set aside €1 billion (US$1.12 billion) for investment in the year ahead. This decision was said to be underpinned by the change in the company’s funding approach, which was now said to be complete. Over the last few years, Acciona has focused on reducing its financial risk and aligning its funding structures with the new regulatory environment for renewable power generation in Spain.

Entrecanales identified two global trends that he said could be seen as both challenges and opportunities – digitisation coupled with Big Data, and corporate transparency.

He said that one of Acciona’s main strategies was to incorporate Big Data into its operations and, indeed, many of its assets were already being monitored and managed on the basis of real-time data analysis.

In terms of transparency, Entrecanales said the company not only welcomed but promoted this trend since it believed rigorous ethics and compliance in all activities were pre-requisites for any business that aspired to respectability and wished to last over time.

At the annual general meeting, Acciona also approved the appointment of Ms Karen Figueres as an independent director, to replace Ms Carmen Becerril, and a dividend of €2.875 (US$3.233) gross per share, to be paid on 3 July 2017 – representing a rise of 15%.