“A virtuous circle.” During its presentation of its results of 2024, the SNCF group welcomed a fourth consecutive year in the GREEN with a profit of 1.6 billion euros and 43 billion euros in billing.
“The SNCF group began the virtuous circle of profitable growth,” said his CEO Jean-Pierre Farandou. Obviously, these results are transported by the good health of SNCF travelers, the entity that covers the activities of the group’s operator, namely TGV and Interities.
With an unprecedented fashion for the train, the entity has an annual turnover of 6% to 20.2 billion euros for a comfortable Ebitda of 2.45 billion and a net gain (after charges and taxes) of 765 million.
But according to the detailed accounts we have given ourselves, a line of questions: that of net debt. Because despite these good results, it explodes more than a year.
A turnover of 20 billion euros
It went from 200 million in 2023 to 1,683 billion euros in 2024, an incredible increase of more than 740%. How to explain such outbreak?
Remember that the benefits of SNCF travelers are completely reinjected to the Tenderora company to finance the Competition Fund for SNCF Réseau to finance the essential regeneration of the network outside of TGV that is outside its breathing.
According to the internal document, SNCF travelers donated SNCF not less than 2.75 billion euros, including 1.71 billion paid to the competition fund. Much more than your net benefit therefore.
These 2.75 billion are composed of 2.5 billion “partial distribution of issuance bonus (comparable to the payment of dividends) and 225 million dividend payments.”
“The impact of dividend payment is significant, the rebound in the net debt is surprising,” said the document. “To finance the increase in Dividends to the SNCF, SNCF travelers resorted to debt in 2024”. In total, SNCF travelers represent 80% of dividend elevators within the group.
A company union wonders, SNCF travelers get cash, their profits are completely reinjected to the network, but it still has to borrow to finance the group.
“A debt that corresponds to the level of activity”
Then we can ask ourselves if this mass increase in the debt does not weaken to SNCF travelers when the operator is more attacked by a competition as a trainitalia. Or if it does not stop its ability to be competitive.
Questioned, SNCF management disputes these risks. “When the group’s anonymous companies were created in 2020, each company had to have a level of debt consistent with its ability to generate cash. However, in 2020 and 2021 it is confinement, travelers stop, there is no cash.”
“Therefore, the group housed a low debt that corresponds to this non -activity,” illustrated by the level very low observed in climbing in 2023 (201 million). But since 2023 and in 2024, TGV are full, we reposition the debt, it is a form of reduction in capital, “we continue.
In its 2025 budget, the company also predicts a decrease in this level of debt to 925 million euros, present a growth in the net gain of the group of 11% to 850 million euros for an EBITDA of 2.46 billion.
Source: BFM TV
