ACS will focus its efforts in the next three years, until 2026, on the Abertis concessions - it has 50% minus one share of the company, compared to 50% plus one share of Mundys, the former Atlantia - and on the development of large critical infrastructures. These two strategic axes will allow it to achieve a profit at the end of the period of between 850 and 1,000 million euros, 66% more than the 600 million in fiscal year 2023.
These objectives are part of the strategic update presented this Wednesday by the company. The new plan and a report published yesterday by Morgan Stanley in which it raised the target price of the shares by 34% have contributed to ACS rising nearly 2% on the stock market today.
The areas of growth in infrastructure until 2030 include not only civil works, but also renewables, data centers, factories or installations for electric cars. Europe, North America and Australia have an infrastructure deficit of 5 billion dollars, and ACS wants to overcome this thanks to its subsidiaries Turner, Cimic, Hochtief, Dragados, Flatiron, Iridium and Abertis.
To achieve its profit target, the company aims to increase profits at an annual rate of 14%. It also wants to achieve revenues of between 43,000 and 48,000 million euros by 2026, which implies an average increase of 9% per year.
In presenting the plan to investors, ACS has described the objectives as "ambitious." It has also announced that they will be accompanied by an improvement in dividends in which it is committed to distributing nearly 2,000 million euros over three years. Its dividend policy involves distributing around 40% of profits among shareholders.
Abertis is a key piece in the growth plan because, according to ACS calculations, it will be able to distribute around 600 million euros per year in dividends, as much as what the construction company itself distributed last year.
The plan for Abertis is to create a "perpetual" model in which certain concessions replace previous ones, without damaging credit metrics. It works so long term that the forecast is to maintain the current rate of dividends until 2038, at which point returns will skyrocket, says ACS. Until 2070, gross operating profits (ebitda) of 71,000 million will be generated in highway concessions.
When citing asset purchase operations, ACS also places emphasis on Abertis, which has identified nine major investment opportunities with which to increase EBITDA generation by 40 billion over its useful life. "The strategy is organic growth through asset optimization and selective acquisitions," she says.
ACS has also proposed to double its stock market value by 2030. It is currently at around 14 billion euros and hopes to increase it year after year, promising a dividend increase of at least 5% annually.
