Andrea Sottoriva discusses how to manage a company through the pandemic: keeping liquidity stable, maintaining banking relationships, and keeping employees flexible on remote work. He emphasizes clear communication when the team can't be in the same room.
Foreign, first of all, thanks God, we had built our cash balance over the prior years and therefore we approached the COVID 19, the crisis with a very healthy financial position, but I would say very healthy liquidity position nevertheless. Okay. We noticed, as you have probably heard, that many of our customers, which are by the way, also our else, because Sita is owned by more than 400 airlines, some of them went into bankruptcy because they were not able basically to continue without having any business. So what we did was to understand for how long we would survive. And also we reviewed our committed lines, okay. And all the relationships that we, that we had with our banks. And then we also tried to understand when our committed lines would expire and we wanted to make sure that our banking partners would be really partners for us after the pandemic. We also had the war in Ukraine. And therefore, I would say we live in a period where basically the changes continue to come and it's nearly impossible to forecast them. So you need to be ready to adapt to a new situation all the time. So this means that, for example, an attention to the working capital is actually one of my top priorities. So you need to make sure that you handle it properly all the time, that you handle the liquidity all the time. You have a stable group of banking partners with which you can continue to talk and try to explore new possibilities. Also in terms of technology, CITA has been quite flexible in understanding also the needs of the employees. Now we have some, we say, agility in terms of coming or not coming to the office. For us, working from a laptop is our day to day activity. But I would say when we meet face to face is very helpful. So we do a lot of interactions. I organize a lot of exercise together, although it's in front of the screen. And hopefully soon we will also meet face to face again. But in order to reinforce the theme, I think, Mike, it's important to remember that we are all human beings. So during those period, working from home meant that some of us start having some, I would say some thoughts about, you know, staying at home and thinking. And thinking. So it's very important that you keep a communication open with all your people. You talk to them, you pick up the phone, you speak, because it's a way to be sure that they feel that you are there, you are present, although you are not physically there. You have to show that you are behind them.
