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Air Bank is a new-generation retail bank. 

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Air Bank

www.airbank.cz

<h3><a href="https://www.ppf.eu/en/air-bank-group" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Air Bank Group &raquo;</a></h3>

Air Bank routinely introduces novel services and solutions to the Czech market, where it&nbsp;leads the way in customer centricity. This approach has seen it continue to attract new clients, increase its volume of lending, and record growing income from regular retail banking services. At the end of 2021, Air Bank had more than 986,000 clients served by 955 employees at 32 branches distributed among the Czech Republic&rsquo;s largest towns and cities. In recent years, its customer experience has been ranked first and second out of two hundred regularly assessed brands that are present in the Czech market.

It was the first domestic bank to launch instant payments. It was also among the first to make the popular Apple Pay service available in the Czech Republic, subsequently going on to add Google Pay, Garmin Pay, and Fitbit Pay. It launched multi-banking and linked this system with all other major banks (from which many clients make their way to Air Bank).&nbsp;
In 2021, Air Bank deployed the first banking app that could be voice-controlled in Czech, a feat earning it Novelty of the Year award in the financial sector. Air Bank was one of the first banks in the Czech Republic to offer banking identity, or BankID, as a means of facilitating communication with the public and commercial sector. Air Bank clients can now make returns on their savings by investing via the Portu service or in other clients&rsquo; loans via the Zonky Renti&eacute;r service. Looking to the future, Air Bank will focus on areas such as services for families and the expansion of its mortgage and investment services.
Air Bank&rsquo;s mobile banking enjoys high levels of popularity among customers. In the third quarter of 2021, it was used by over 670,000 users, almost a quarter of whom made daily use of the app. The&nbsp;scale of Air Bank&rsquo;s digitalisation is also phenomenal in terms of clients opening new accounts (75% online), applying for loans (88% online), or taking out travel insurance (91% online).

<table>
 <thead>
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 <td scope="col">Air Bank's Values</td>
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 </thead>
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 <td>Simplicity</td>
 </tr>
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 <td>Truthfulness</td>
 </tr>
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 <td>Courage</td>
 </tr>
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 <td>Friendliness</td>
 </tr>
 </tbody>
</table>

In 2021, the bank committed to environmentally and socially responsible business by subscribing to the Czech Banking Association&rsquo;s Memorandum on Sustainable Finance. Both Air Bank and Zonky are regularly named among the most responsible consumer lenders in the People in Need Responsible Lending Index.
PPF Group holds 91.12% in Air Bank through PPF Financial Holdings a.s. and Home Credit B.V.

<h2>Zonky</h2>
Zonky, operated by Benxy (a subsidiary of Air Bank), is a P2P fintech platform. Zonky offers to lend money via a simple digital platform and application. Using a computer or smartphone, customers can handle the whole borrowing process from submitting an application to signing a contract within minutes. Zonky typically charges lower interest than traditional lenders.
Zonky also offers services for all types of investors, both experienced and newcomers based on sharing economy principles. At Zonky, clients themselves can make money by acting as a &ldquo;bank&rdquo; and investing into loans without an institutional intermediary, either through our in-house portfolio management or through a Zonky Renti&eacute;r.
Zonky, the P2P lending platform, formally became part of Air Bank in December 2021, but continues to offer its services under its own brand.

Czech Republic

This next-generation retail and hyper-digital bank was founded 10 years ago to compete with conventional banks by offering straightforward, customer-centric, and innovative services. Air Bank is the fastest growing and expanding neo-bank in the&nbsp;Czech&nbsp;Republic. Few banks of&nbsp;this kind in&nbsp;the&nbsp;world can match its size and&nbsp;profitability.

Air Bank regularly wins awards from industry professionals and the general public. In industry competitions, Air Bank is noted as a top bank for the services it offers and chiefly for how friendly it is to customers.
Půjčka od Air Bank (Air Bank Loan) has been rated time and again as the fairest loan product in the Responsible Lending Index compiled by People in Need. The bank also consistently takes the top spot in delivering the best customer experience among companies active anywhere in the Czech Republic.

Multiple Awards

Michal Strcula

“We are keen to remain a friendly bank that can help people understand their money in as many areas as possible with simple and friendly services.”

Air Bank's Growth

Air Bank Clients

ClearBank is a new digital bank that has been providing clearing and settlement services to corporate customers since 2017.

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www.clear.bank

ClearBank Ltd.

Since its inception in 2017, ClearBank has provided financial services to corporate customers via cloud-based, smart and robust technology offering real-time payment settlement. Swift processing and next-generation financial solutions are integral to ClearBank&rsquo;s business model. Transactions in 2021 came to EUR&nbsp;140&nbsp;billion. As at 31 December&nbsp;2021, PPF Group held a 44.78%&nbsp;stake in&nbsp;ClearBank.
Headquartered in the United Kingdom, the bank is subject to joint regulation by the British authorities responsible for supervising the financial markets: the Prudential Regulation Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority.&nbsp;

Clearbank

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 Industry Awards for ClearBank in 2021
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 The Card and Payment Awards, Winner of Best Service to Business award
 </td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
 <td>
 PayTech Awards, Winner of Best SME Payments Initiative 
 </td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
 <td>
 FStech Awards, ClearBank and Tide win Partnership or Collaboration of the Year
 </td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
 <td>
 Payments Power 10, Charles McManus wins top 10
 </td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
 <td>
 Emerging Payments Awards, ClearBank and Tide win Best Partnership Initiative
 </td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
 <td>
 Deloitte Fast 50, #1 Winner of Fastest Growing UK Tech Company 
 </td>
 </tr>
 </tbody>
</table>

Great Britain

ClearBank is a purpose-built, technology enabled clearing and embedded banking platform. Through its banking licence and intelligent, robust technology solutions, ClearBank enables its clients to offer real-time payment and innovative banking services to their customers.

Charles McManus

“ClearBank is the first proven and fully regulated cloud-native clearing bank in the UK. Over the last five years we have demonstrated the success of our business model and through our work with leading financial service providers, helped to both unlock their potential and bring about positive and meaningful change for UK businesses and consumers.”

ClearBank

O2 Czech Republic, the largest telecommunications operator on the Czech market, has long focused on future-oriented trends.

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www.o2.cz

O2 Czech Republic a.s.

Operating in a highly competitive, highly saturated telecommunications market, O2 CZ excels by combining the most affordable fixed internet, a superior mobile network, and attractive television content. While mobile telecommunications services are its main revenue stream, O2 covers with its fixed internet 99% of the Czech Republic&rsquo;s inhabited territory, which makes it the largest internet provider for both businesses and households. O2 is one of the biggest players in hosting, cloud services, managed services, and ICT.
O2 CZ also focuses on developing and offering more unconventional telecommunications services, such as cybersecurity services, along with financial services such as device insurance or mobile travel insurance. Virtual operators also offer their services in the O2 CZ mobile network. In response to changing trends and market demands, O2 has launched new tariffs with unlimited data in the 5G network. O2 Spolu (&ldquo;O2 Together&rdquo;) is a unique offering on the market that comprises family service packages custom built by customers themselves.
O2 concentrates its attention on technological advancements and innovation. The fifth-generation network expanded to nearly 60 towns and cities across the&nbsp;Czech Republic in&nbsp;2021. A new generation of the powerful O2 Smart Box, combining the functions of a modem, Wi-Fi router, and smart home hub, was launched. Other areas in which O2&nbsp;is strongly committed include the development of artificial intelligence and big data, an area in which O2 subsidiary Dataclair.ai team specialises. O2 is also developing the financial services sector, smart city solutions and connectivity, and the autonomous mobility of the&nbsp;future.

"A Smart Network"

<h2>O2 Slovakia</h2>
O2 Slovakia, until 31 December&nbsp;2021 a wholly owned subsidiary of O2&nbsp;Czech Republic, entered the Slovak market in&nbsp;February 2007 as the country&rsquo;s third operator. By 2021, it was serving 2.3&nbsp;million customers in Slovakia. In early September 2021, the company rolled out 5G services in new locations and unveiled plans for the further building of fifth-generation infrastructure with Ericsson technology in Slovakia. Equipment of the same brand is now replacing components of the radio access network (RAN) as part of a large-scale technology upgrade in&nbsp;the&nbsp;O2 Slovakia network.
Corporate customers are catered to by O2 Business Services, a wholly owned subsidiary of O2 Slovakia, which offers a portfolio of fixed and mobile telecommunications services and ICT solutions.

Smartbox

<h2>Dataclair.ai</h2>
In 2020, O2 CZ &ndash; as a&nbsp;major technology company &ndash; continued its research and development into artificial intelligence, which is expected to come into its own not only in telecommunications, but also in banking, healthcare, and pharmaceuticals. Activities at the Dataclair.ai internal artificial intelligence center focus on advanced big data processing, machine learning, and working with neural networks.
<a href="/en/insights/ppf-and-artificial-intelligence/dataclair-ai">Learn more in the section PPF and Artificial Intelligence</a>

<h2>O2 TV</h2>
O2 TV is a core product yielding the highest level of customer satisfaction. However, the company continues to work diligently on consolidating its exclusive sports content. In addition to the complete FORTUNA: LIGA football league season and the top-flight ice hockey Extraliga, it has added a&nbsp;new station, Premier Sport, to transmit hundreds of live broadcasts from the English Premier League, the NFL, and the world&rsquo;s most prestigious MMA organization, the UFC. For tennis fans, O2 holds television rights to the complete WTA tennis circuit until the end of 2022.
With the O2 TV service, the company consolidated its position as the&nbsp;most popular IPTV provider in the Czech Republic. At the end of 2021, there were 603,000&nbsp;active subscriptions, including customers using O2 TV Sport Pack online and O2 TV HBO and Sport Pack. The range offered by O2 TV was expanded to include ten new TV&nbsp;stations during the past year.

Slovakia

O2 Czech Republic is the largest telecommunications operator in the Czech Republic. It provides voice, internet and data services to a full range of customers: households, SMEs, large corporations, and government. With its O2 TV service, it is the&nbsp;largest operator of&nbsp;internet television broadcasting in the country.
In the Czech Republic, O2 is one of the most active supporters of digital literacy among children and young people, promoting their online safety and the use of technology in education.

Corporate social responsibility is in O2 Czech Republic&rsquo;s DNA. The O2 Foundation is the oldest corporate foundation in the Czech Republic. Since its inception, it has channeled tens of millions of crowns to support thousands of young people as they pave the way for a&nbsp;better civil society and seek a better education.
In recent years, the foundation&rsquo;s support has centered on Czech primary education, which, thanks to the O2Chytr&aacute;&Scaron;kola.cz project, has benefited from increased funding to upgrade its infrastructure. The project targets the blanket introduction of digital literacy, online safety, and media literacy as topics covered in mainstream curricula.
To help combat the effects of the pandemic, O2 has offered a&nbsp;helping hand to both the public and the government. Its most significant actions have been the free set-up and operation of the 1212 national crisis line; the provision of mobile internet access to all tariff customers in the spring in order to ease their access to remote learning; the announcement of a&nbsp;CZK 5&nbsp;million grant for schools and children&rsquo;s homes for the digitalization of education; the offer of free mobile computer connections to schools and non-profit organizations; and assistance to the government in promoting the eRou&scaron;ka application.

Social Responsibility

Key Financial Statements

Jindřich Fremuth

"With the help of the latest technologies, we are here to make the lives of all of our customers easier."

O2 Czech Republic

CETIN’s mission is to build, operate and constantly innovate the reliable, secure and fast telecommunications infrastructure.

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www.cetin.cz

CETIN Czech Republic

<h2>General info</h2>The company, a wholesale provider of telecommunications services, owns and operates the largest electronic communications network in the Czech Republic. It offers its services, always under the same conditions, to all telecommunications operators and internet service providers who supply services to end customers via the CETIN infrastructure. The company mainly offers mobile network infrastructure services, mass fixed network services (network access services, xDSL and optical connectivity, IP TV, and voice services), data services for corporate networks, and data centre leasing.

CETIN&rsquo;s national fixed network comprises approximately 20 million pairs of copper cables and almost 46,000 km of fibre-optic cables, though this length is increasing all the time thanks to extensive investment. Mobile technology is disseminated by around 6,400 base stations. CETIN contributes to a network sharing project and provides its mobile infrastructure to O2 and T-Mobile. CETIN also offers international services to domestic and foreign providers. On the international stage, the company maintains a presence via physical network nodes (POPs) in London, Vienna, Bratislava, Frankfurt and Hong Kong, and offers comprehensive international voice and data services to over 200 customers worldwide. CETIN, as the administrator and operator of the largest critical information infrastructure for telecommunications in the Czech Republic, oversees the protection of its customers and the availability of services.

<h2>Data security</h2>In the protection of its network and users, it adopts security measures that are in line with the recommendations of the National Cyber and Information Security Agency (N&Uacute;KIB) and the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA). It is involved in FENIX, the project that draws together companies providing connections to important services with a view to ensuring that these remain in operation even in the most critical situations. The company continuously engages in risk analysis and cybersecurity auditing in line with best practice, conducts security tests, invests in security technologies and specialists, and shares knowledge and best practices with PPF Telecom Group.

CETIN&rsquo;s mission is to build, operate and constantly innovate the reliable, secure and fast telecommunications infrastructure essential for the further digital transformation and competitiveness of the Czech economy. The CETIN telecommunications network&rsquo;s set of mobile and fixed technologies is available to 99.6% of Czech households.

CETIN continues to upgrade its network throughout the country As the manager of the country&rsquo;s largest communication infrastructure, CETIN annually invests billions of crowns in its development. CETIN is working hard to build a system of fibre-optic connections and complete the blanket modernisation and acceleration of the original copper network. In both cases, the average available speed in the CETIN access network has increased further, rising by 25% on 2019 to the current 105 Mbps.

Infobox

Figures for CETIN CZ (group, consolidated) *

Juraj Šedivý

“Our state-of-the-art telecommunications infrastructure solutions provide the backbone for the digitalisation of the world around us.”

Cetin Group

PPF Group is an international investment group founded in the Czech 
Republic in 1991. It has grown to manage operations in 25 countries around the world.

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Renáta and Petr Kellner set up their family foundation in XXXX. Alongside the core educational projects it initiates and funds, the Foundation contributes to projects being implemented by individuals and institutions in education, the arts, and the promotion of health.   

Nadace The Kellner Family Foundation

Quiet achiever – Perspectives from PPF Group’s top lawyer Luboš Král

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PPF, a. s. 

PPF Gate

PPF a.s.&rsquo;s objective is to provide consulting to both the PPF Group N. V. holding company, which manages the entire PPF Group, and the various individual PPF Group companies. In delivering these services, it strives to maximize efficiencies and synergies across the group while making the best possible use of the knowledge and skills of its top-notch experts.&nbsp;

PPF a.s. is the principal consulting company within PPF Group.

PPF a.s. 

Interview for Forbes

Developing a biotech company in Central Europe is an extremely bold move, says Sotio CEO

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Sotio

SOTIO Biotech a.s.

Sotio Biotech B.V. 

PPF Biotech B.V.

SOTIO has been part of PPF Group since 2012 and manages its biotechnology activities. It is building a diversified portfolio of immuno-oncology products based on its own research and development, partnerships, licensing agreements, investments, mergers, and acquisitions. It has a presence in both Europe and the US, with its principal centres located in Prague in the Czech Republic, Basel in Switzerland, and Boston in Massachusetts.
SOTIO&rsquo;s research and development programmes embrace IL-15 superagonist-based products, including immunocytokines, personalised cell immunotherapy based on its CAR T platform, and next-generation antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) oncology products.

SOTIO validates the safety and efficacy of its products in a full range of clinical trials &mdash; the Group has conducted seventeen trials in Europe and the US since 2012. In 2022/23, the newly developed products BOXR1030 (CAR T), SOT102 (ADC), and SOT201 (immunocytokine) will advance to the clinical trial phase. In late 2021, SOTIO entered into a collaboration agreement with the global pharmaceutical company MSD (Merck) with the purpose of jointly conducting an extensive Phase II clinical study to evaluate the safety and efficacy of IL-15 superagonist SOT101 in combination with MSD&rsquo;s KEYTRUDA&reg; (pembrolizumab).
In November 2021, SOTIO licensed the technology of South Korea&rsquo;s LegoChem Biosciences for the development of five new antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) programmes. SOTIO will be responsible for the research, preclinical and clinical development, and commercialisation of the products.
In 2021, SOTIO&rsquo;s division engaged in the research and development of immunotherapy treatments for cancer based on antibody-drug conjugates was spun out from SOTIO a.s., a biotechnology organisation, into a newly formed entity, SOTIO Biotech a.s. The original company, renamed SCTbio a.s., continues to manufacture modern cell therapy products and provide logistics support for clinical trials.

Other PPF Biotech Holdings

Switzerland

China

France

The group of biotech companies within PPF&rsquo;s Biotech arm that researches and develops innovative cancer treatments and translates compelling scientific knowledge in the field of immunotherapy into clinical trials. Teams of leading experts from all over the world work for SOTIO as part of its extensive international activities. SOTIO Group runs its own laboratory facilities in Prague.

At the end of 2020, PPF sold its stake in NBE-Therapeutics, a&nbsp;company developing innovative ADC products for the treatment of solid tumors, to leading global pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim.
This deal, the largest of its kind in Europe in 10 years, showed the value of the ADCs that SOTIO Biotech maintains in its portfolio and that it continues to develop. These products could reach their first patients in the beginning of 2022 in the first phase of clinical trials.

Sale of PPF's Stake in NBE-Therapeutics

"SOTIO exemplifies the world-class standard of Czech science in its mission and results. Our efforts are focused on finding a cure for cancer."

Sotio Biotech

You&rsquo;re on a&nbsp;lengthy quest to tackle one of humanity&rsquo;s greatest problems, cancer. How far are you from your goal, in whatever form it takes? When it comes to developing new drugs, once you&rsquo;ve discovered a&nbsp;promising substance in the lab, it takes eight to twelve years to go through all the phases of clinical trials before it can be brought to market. We are currently running three such programmes, three substances, where we have transitioned from the laboratory to clinical trials. For all of them, we&rsquo;re now somewhere around the stage where we should know by the&nbsp; end of this year whether the data is promising and whether it warrants proceeding to the final step in the trial, which is the registrational study or phase&nbsp;three&nbsp;clinical trial. That is the final step, and if it goes well, it means we will have a&nbsp;drug that can be marketed.
Can you quantify the likelihood of that scenario unfolding? We should know by the end of the year, and we&rsquo;ll have an answer for all three substances by the middle of next year. If they successfully pass the second phase of clinical trials, there is a&nbsp;30 to 40 percent chance they&rsquo;ll be marketed. It&rsquo;s early days yet, so I&nbsp;would estimate our likelihood of success to be somewhere around 20 percent at the moment. Right at the start of the research, it was well below one percent.
During our interview Ms.&nbsp;Kellner&rsquo;s assistant called you for an appointment. This leads me to asking how Sotio&rsquo;s role has changed in the group since Mr.&nbsp;Kellner&rsquo;s death? It&rsquo;s hard to say right now, because the whole group has been going through changes since Mr. &Scaron;mejc came on board. But we clearly have the backing of both the family and PPF&rsquo;s management for the Sotio project to move forward. Mr. Kellner was very enthusiastic about Sotio, it was very close to his heart. He joined meetings that went into quite a&nbsp;bit of detail and enjoyed it. It&rsquo;s very hard for anyone to catch up quickly with the ten years he spent keenly interested in it. Mr.&nbsp;&Scaron;mejc and the Kellner family do have the drive to understand the issues at play, but it will take two years for them to get there. I&rsquo;m now referring to the complexity of our work and the business landscape we&rsquo;re competing in. Cancer research is hugely competitive. And the fact that we&rsquo;re a Czech&nbsp;company trying to compete with Western and American biotechnology companies is both bold and complicated.
And frankly, is it worth it? Take the US biotech sector &ndash; surely they&rsquo;re bursting at the seams and perhaps they&rsquo;re working on exactly the same thing? And this isn&rsquo;t even mentioning Asia. Yes, it&rsquo;s worth it, but it&rsquo;s obviously a&nbsp;challenge. The talent, expertise, and professional and business experience are concentrated on the west and east coasts of the United States. Then there&rsquo;s a bit in Western Europe, but they&rsquo;re the poor relatives. And then we have a&nbsp;few rare birds in Central Europe. We&rsquo;re very conscious of that. There&rsquo;s a&nbsp;lot of competition, and the last two years have not been kind to the biotech industry because of the economic crisis and there isn&rsquo;t much appetite to invest in something so risky. Smaller companies are used to raising money every two years so they can proceed to the next phase of clinical trials, but they&rsquo;re not having much success right now. Investment in biotech has tanked over the last two years, being very muted. But because we&rsquo;re backed by a dependable investor, we have the advantage of not having to stall any of our projects.
Mr. Kellner had a&nbsp;soft spot for Sotio. Can we expect the new PPF management to be more pragmatic &ndash; is there any risk that the limits will be reined in? We haven&rsquo;t sensed that, but there has definitely been some change, which I&rsquo;m glad to see. As you progress with a&nbsp;biotech project, the rule of thumb is that each successive phase is a lot more expensive than the one before it. And it&rsquo;s very common in this business that at some stage of clinical development, big pharmaceutical companies step in, looking for promising substances that biotech companies might have. Conversely, another typical scenario is that at some stage of product development, a&nbsp;biotech company tries to find a&nbsp;solid partner, either to buy the project or to be involved in its ongoing development.
Is that where you are headed right now? Yes, we&rsquo;re more open to collaboration with partners. If we see our programmes yielding promising data, instead of resisting, we actively approach pharmaceutical companies and present our results to them. A&nbsp;pharmaceutical company could shoulder some of the costs and provide important know-how. In this respect, Mr. &Scaron;mejc has a&nbsp;different, much more rational approach. Mr. Kellner liked to be completely in charge, so the vast majority of companies in PPF&rsquo;s portfolio were fully controlled by the group. But when it comes to projects as risky as biotechnology, partnerships make a&nbsp;lot of sense.
So an investor could enter Sotio by acquiring part of the company? There are various scenarios, one being that a&nbsp;biotech-focused investment fund might come along and take a&nbsp;shine to our portfolio.
So how much of Sotio is up for sale? It&rsquo;s impossible to say. These interactions do crop up from time to time, but the market is stacked against us, the timing isn&rsquo;t quite right. So even if this were perhaps our preferred route, which it&rsquo;s not entirely, the market climate wouldn&rsquo;t allow it.
But you&rsquo;re holding some valuable cards now &ndash; a&nbsp;20% chance of launching a&nbsp;drug is a&nbsp;lot. Yes, but don&rsquo;t forget that in the last five years there were around 120 biotech IPOs on the Nasdaq exchange. Last year, there were just four. The market is in stasis. Everyone is waiting for the economy to pick up and for funds to whet their investment appetite again. A&nbsp;more appealing scenario for us would be a&nbsp;partnership with a&nbsp;pharmaceutical company, with one of the programmes being licensed.
Have there been any negotiations? Discussions are ongoing, but I&nbsp;can&rsquo;t comment on them. I can say that once a programme gets to the clinical phase and we feel that the data looks good, we can then make the pitch to potential partners.
One of your substances going through&nbsp;research has potentially reached a commercial milestone. How big a&nbsp;step forward is that? The &ldquo;nanrilkefusp alfa&rdquo; programme, formerly known as SOT101, has successfully passed the first phase of clinical development. The second phase involves testing on a&nbsp;sample of around 300 people and monitoring both safety and incipient signs of efficacy. If it goes well and we see progress in perhaps a&nbsp;third of the patients, a&nbsp;large, very expensive study involving hundreds, perhaps even&nbsp;thousands of patients will be done. That study will investigate whether the substance statistically increases the odds of survival. And the milestone is that with SOT101, we&rsquo;ve now gone past phase one&nbsp;and we&rsquo;re clearly seeing patients who have benefited from it. We&rsquo;re now running three phase two&nbsp;trials. The real milestone will be when we see which substances it makes sense to start the ultra-expensive phase three&nbsp;with.
How much would that phase cost? It costs somewhere between fifty and a&nbsp;hundred million dollars, and that&rsquo;s for each substance separately. But the cost of each substance may differ somewhat.
Is PPF prepared to finance it? That remains to be seen. It depends on the data when we get to evaluating phase two. Personally, I&nbsp;would us to go down the route of partnering with a&nbsp;big pharmaceutical company. It would elevate us to a&nbsp;whole other level of quality. Coming out of Central Europe, we would suddenly be on the radar in the US biotech world. I&nbsp;would always be in favour of us going down that road when we reach those expensive phases. If the data from the clinical trials looks good, each of these substances could be the subject of a&nbsp;multi-billion-dollar deal with large corporations.
If the second phase doesn&rsquo;t work for any of these substances, will you call it a&nbsp;day? It&rsquo;s yet to be seen. I&nbsp;honestly don&rsquo;t know. We have three programmes in clinical trials, but there are others in the lab research phase. Sotio&rsquo;s vision is to focus on what we&rsquo;re best at, which is researching and putting new molecules through clinical trials. If the big three don&rsquo;t make it, there are still so-called preclinical programmes in the pipeline that we would continue to work on. And here we&rsquo;re talking about much lower costs, somewhere in the order of millions of dollars.
If you were to actually bring the research to a&nbsp;successful conclusion in phase three, does that mean you&rsquo;d have a&nbsp;drug ready to package? Yes, if it goes through, there will be some sort of marketing authorization process, but that&rsquo;s just an administrative step. Then it really is ready to package up. But after that, there&rsquo;s the extremely difficult stage of marketing and commercialising the product amid the enormous competition that is out there now.
And would the box say Sotio on it? If it was developed by Sotio itself and we were the ones who did the third phase, it would say Sotio. And that means Sotio would become a&nbsp;pharmaceutical company.
Is that the holy grail of your business? It&rsquo;s kind of the ultimate, but perhaps rather naive, vision.&nbsp;But discussions about Sotio&rsquo;s strategic goals are still ongoing.
How crucial and business-relevant would it be to have three available drugs on your desk? The bottom line is that each drug has patent protection, and when that patent expires, the drug can be produced generically, but the margin on them is lost. So big companies are pushed to keep adding new, innovative drugs to their pipeline that have good results but also patent protection. That&rsquo;s why they&rsquo;re willing to pay to make products which look promising, if they can see that the data makes sense to us and that there is a good chance it will work. You&rsquo;ll find similar transactions in the order of billions of dollars for every product in the last five years. The business potential might then emerge after successfully passing phase two.
I didn&rsquo;t look at the income statement, even though it&rsquo;s not really relevant in biotech. There was a loss of 330 million for 2021. What was it last year? Those are accounting numbers and say nothing about reality. The annual budget is tens of millions of euros, and it shows that it&rsquo;s just a big and expensive business. When you get to the clinical trial phase, the costs mainly reflect the number of people involved. Each patient represents a significant cost, which can be somewhere in the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Is it fair to say that this year is a major milestone that will seal Sotio&rsquo;s fate? Yes, it&rsquo;s an important time for the company&rsquo;s future and what happens next for Sotio. Phase one of BOXR1030 and SOT102 will end, and phase two data will be crucial for SOT101. Some pharmaceutical companies in the past invested in substances before or during phase one. Given the market situation, most deals are now done after phase two, where there need to be clear signals on the product&rsquo;s efficacy. Generally in our industry, the decisions being made now involve much less risk than in the past. The market environment is the worst it has been in the 12 years I&rsquo;ve worked here, and it&rsquo;s worse than after the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
author:&nbsp;Jaroslav Bukovsk&yacute; source: https://www.e15.cz/rozhovory/rozvijet-ve-stredni-evrope-biotechnologickou-firmu-je-nesmirne-troufale-rika-sef-sotia-1396413?openpremium=16e873b7fa63de8f054be7840d462987

Interview for E15

CEO ClearBank: We’re borne out of the fintech revolution 

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Are you a bank at all, or do you just make payments? We are a fully licensed bank. But we don't do everything that regular banks do, i.e. loans, deposits, mortgages, retail banking, etc. We want to be the world's best in transactional payments and clearing, based on the latest cloud technology. 
In the UK, you can have a banking license and not make any loans. In Europe and the US, you must provide lending when having a banking license. 
So you make money by providing payments that are faster and cheaper than your competitors? Yes, but there's more. We provide real-time payments, also more resilient, thanks to the cloud and other innovations in the banking world. We enable our customers to create new products that they can't do with other traditional clearing banks.
Banks have been operating in the UK for around 300 years and I wonder why they cannot make real-time payments. Let's go back to 2016 looking at the rationale for ClearBank. There used to be 16 clearing banks in the UK, there were names like Midwest, Midlands, Williams &amp; Glyn. All of these banks have effectively become the big four of Lloyd's, HSBC, NatWest, and Barclays through market consolidation and are built on legacy technology. All of the payment infrastructure that they offer to clients is very similar, the costs are basically the same, poor service, batch processing of payments rather than real-time, etc. 
We are coming out of the fintech revolution. All frontend applications (i.e. those used by the end customer, ed.) are trying to give clients something new, to simplify the customer experience. But then they connect with the big four banks and the customer experience is ruined.
We said, let's build a bank on a modern technology stack, connect it to all payment rails, and service those banks with that API that the rest cannot. That was the reason why we founded the bank. And we recognise that this is not just a UK issue, but a global payments issue.
I'm a bit surprised that real-time payments don't work in the UK, because we have them in the Czech Republic. I know it sounds unbelievable. There are 28 countries globally currently putting in faster payment infrastructure, including the Czech Republic. The US, DACH for example, does not have real-time payments. 
Does your revenue come mainly from banks? Exactly. In order to, we targeted the regulated financial institutions in the UK to start with. These are authorised payment institutions, EMIs, credit unions, banks, and building societies. If they are not a direct member of the payments schemes, they need to go to a clearing bank to clear their customers' payments on a daily basis. 
When we first started, we were very much targeted to EMIs authorized payment, new fintechs. As we developed the business, we then approached larger and larger clients. For example, we will soon disclose that we have started working for a huge US payment company. They are launching a new corporate card in Europe and they wanted a bank that could provide the right clearing technology capabilities, and they selected ClearBank to do that. 
If even the biggest banks are using legacy technology, is the potential huge for you? The addressable market is huge, because what we haven&rsquo;t talked about yet, is moving from clearing to embedded banking. Let me explain. If you look at the UK SME banking market, you have all the traditional players like Barclays and Nat West, and also emerging players like Tide.
Tide doesn't want to become a bank (it offers businesses current accounts and financial services including automated bookkeeping and integrated billing, ed.). They want to offer their customers a bank account, a credit card, but they don't want to be a bank. Yet they now serve almost eight per cent of the UK SME market, which is a total of 450,000 SME accounts.
So Tide has partnered with ClearBank, and through the Tide app, if you're a hairdresser or a chiropodist or a plumber or an electrician, you sign up to Tide and then you click a button and you get a ClearBank bank account, but that's accessed through the Tide platform. So our customer is Tide and we take over all their customers. We effectively outsource our banking license to certain third parties. That's what we mean by embedded banking.
So you sell financial services? Yes, we do. We are now working with all the fintechs and other companies to provide them with bank account services that allow them to pay like a bank even though they are not a bank.
We're moving across a number of industry verticals, so for example in the UK we partnered with Raisin, which provides retail savings, and interest rates savings. Raisin is growing rapidly in Europe and in the US. But in February they will move all of their UK retail savings accounts under ClearBank as part of the embedded banking model. It's a huge billion pound addressable market in the UK and Europe. 
Do you just charge a fee for each payment or do you offer a kind of subscription? First, we charge a monthly fee for the bank account. Second, we charge per transaction, so we charge per faster payment. Thirdly, because we don't do credit transactions in the UK and you have to put cash in your bank account, we pay interest on it. 
We hold cash at a pound for pound rate at the Bank of England (the UK's central bank, ed.) and do not move it. We return some of the interest we earn on these overnight deposits back to our clients. So, in short, customers pay account fees, and transaction fees and receive interest. 
There is a huge temptation not to hold deposits at the Bank of England at a 1:1 ratio but to lend them out and make money on them, which is a common practice. Almost every bank does that. Our balance sheet has &pound;3 billion of cash on the asset side. But even if all our customers came at the same time and took money out of their account, all the cash is sitting in the Bank of England, so they would all get their deposits, unlike traditional banks.
Who are your competitors? Our competitors in the UK are, for example, The Bank of London. They have no customers or products yet. But it's going into transaction banking, banking as a service, so it's one we are watching.
Then there are the big four banks, which are still trying to compete with us, and other new players operating in Europe. For example, Berlin-based Solarisbank, then Banking Circle or Railsr which was RailsBank. They all provide some form of banking as a service or embedded banking products in Europe, but they are not yet strong in the UK. 
I bet you'll be bought by one of the four legacy banks. They are too strong to miss this opportunity. One of the big banks has had a look at us already. We see opportunities for our product to cross border, in Europe, and the US. Because of Brexit, we are already setting up a bank in Amsterdam, which will allow us to go to France, Germany, etc., via a bank passport. 
We also want to set up a "dollar leg" so that we can transact in dollars and serve our customers globally. 
Have you already obtained a banking license in the European Union? We are currently working a lot with the Dutch National Bank and the European Central Bank. We are also applying for a license so that we - like in the UK - are covered by deposit insurance. That's why we have to be a bank in Europe. We applied last November and we hope to get the license in the second half of this year. The application consisted of 92 documents and two and a half thousand pages. 
In Europe, we will do credit intermediation in connection with payments, but we will not do loans or mortgages, for example.
Do you have the financial means to expand in Europe and possibly the US? You may have noticed our announcement in October that our UK business is now profitable. This is quite a rarity for a fintech company. We have joined the so-called 5% Club, which is that only five per cent of new banks in the world that ever achieve profitability. 
We had a fantastic investor in PPF right from the start. The group funded us from the beginning. Last year we expanded our shareholder base and you will have noticed the transaction with Apax Partners that we announced. We raised &pound;175 million from them, and that's basically money to expand in Europe and the US. 
You weren&lsquo;t profitable last year. How did you do now? We're taking on five new clients every month, and in total, we have over 200 new clients in our pipeline. Our first year's income was &pound;1 million, the next year &pound;10 million, then &pound;22 million. Last year we were expecting 40 million, but we made over 60 million because of run rate. We are now at 100 million tight run rates in the UK business. It could easily be &pound;20 million, &pound;300 million or &pound;400 million in the next few years. 
A lot of the good performance is due to the higher interest rate environment. I talked about the three legs of our business: account fees, transaction fees, and, of course, interest rates. In terms of inflation, interest rates have been rising, which gave us an additional boost, but we don't want to be dependent on them. Interest rates will go up and then down again. We are trying to build mainly transactional and fee income as the core of the business. 
Will shareholders change in the near future? Not yet. Maybe eventually we&rsquo;ll look to widen the cap table following the expansion into Europe and the US and if we are going for an IPO. In funding, it&rsquo;s interesting to look at the mentality of investors. There are more investors knocking on my door now than ever before. They're all desperate for the next round to get in. We are in a very privileged position because we are in profit, but we have to continue to earn the right. 
The Apax transaction helped us because it's a famous company. It was like a validation. There is a certain mentality in the private equity space that if one of the big names is in, I should come in, too.
But the main thing to say is that for companies that are not profitable, the value went down significantly last year because of tighter monetary policy. Our bank was immune to this because it is profitable.
What was PPF's investment in ClearBank? We started from scratch in 2016. At the beginning, it was &pound;12.5m for 35 per cent. So Petr Kellner put in &pound;12.5m, John Risley put in the same amount and we had &pound;25m, the two shareholders with 70% and the management had 30 per cent so that we could get a banking license and build the bank.
Your customers are also crypto companies. The crypto market is bearish now. Do you see a drop in activity? You are right that the volumes traded in the cryptocurrency market have decreased, but it is picking up again in terms of new products. For us, it's further diversification within our portfolio. Transactions will go up and down just like interest rates. 
So we only trade with the best and regulated companies for example Coinbase, Ziglu, Robin Hood, BCB, etc. They must be fully regulated. We have a portfolio of essentially digital asset exchanges that we look after. We only do the receipt and disbursement of funds. We don't take any risk holding cryptocurrencies. We only take on the risk of clearing payments.
But we also focus on developing new forms of payments using digital assets because we have all the infrastructure. Apart from stablecoins, it is the digital currencies of central banks that use tokens as a more efficient means of payment. I'm not talking about gambling on bitcoins, I'm talking about the proper development of payments. 
Are you working with central banks on digital currencies? Yes. If the world moves off the old... I call it a Kodak moment, like Kodak digital printing, overnight. If the world changes, we need to be ready to play a role here in this space, just as we do in the old infrastructure space.
With these companies in the crypto world, we are actively involved with a number of those firms looking at central banks to do digital currencies, tokenized deposits, or stablecoins. Given the one-to-one balance sheet that we hold in cash at the Bank of England, a number of people are approaching us as to why we don't create our own stablecoin. 
Unlike the algorithmic and all the rest, which are not backed by real assets - ClearBank is an infrastructure bank that holds all of its cash in a central bank. Anyway, we have an R&amp;D hub in the digital asset space and I see a lot of interesting opportunities, not in crypto, but in the real digital payment carriers.
We now offer a current account, a virtual account, and an interest-bearing account, and in the future we might offer a digital account where you could have a Clear Bank stablecoin in your digital wallet.
How do you see the future of cryptocurrencies? Does it make sense to you? It doesn't make sense for them to be unregulated and gambling. I've worked in regulated financial services around the world, and I was involved in the financial crisis and cleaning up the mess that was left in its wake.
Financial services cannot be about individuals losing &pound;300,000 in three or four days. From my perspective, building in proper risk management or more efficient payment mechanisms will absolutely not make the use of cryptocurrencies go away. But central banks will never lose control of payments.
We have already seen the failed example of Facebook introducing its own currency. It&rsquo;s not gonna happen. In fact, you may have seen recently in the US crisis and after the FTX cryptocurrency crash, when banks simply had to write off their assets. But if you look at the regulation of, for example, issuers of tokenized deposits and whatever, they will probably be held by banks and will have to be regulated. That's all going to come in the regulated sector.
What do you think will be left of the cryptocurrency world? They have significantly accelerated the digitization of the entire financial services sector. 
I'll give you one example, PEXA, an Australian technology platform company, has acquired data on the entire housing stock from the government in the UK on a procurement basis and has it in one database, and they've connected all the mortgage banks to it. They now have 90 per cent of the data on property transfers in their database. We have become their transaction bank. 
The way it works in the UK is that you have to wait for your solicitor to tell you that your funds have been settled after you buy the property before you get the keys to the house. There are lots of fees involved in this process. Now with Pexa, you get the keys in real-time as soon as you buy the house.
Pexa wants to go to Europe and wants ClearBank to go with them. On the Pexa platform, you get the assurance that the transaction is secure, removing unnecessary links in the chain like escrow with solicitors and house insurance. One of the most stressful things in life is suddenly a lot easier because technology has been created to do it.
Author: Jiř&iacute; Zatloukal Source: <a href="https://www.seznamzpravy.cz/clanek/ekonomika-firmy-sef-clearbank-prodelat-za-tri-dny-8-milionu-je-hazard-krypto-ale-zustane-225147">https://www.seznamzpravy.cz/clanek/ekonomika-firmy-sef-clearbank-prodelat-za-tri-dny-8-milionu-je-hazard-krypto-ale-zustane-225147</a>

Interview for Seznam Zpravy

We pay attention to details and use praise sparingly, says PPF’s Head of HR.

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He knows nearly everyone throughout the group. He has recruited executives for most of the key roles and keeps searching for the cream of the crop both on the Czech market and internationally. Specifically, he looks for individuals who the company can trust to make decisions worth billions. Jan&aacute;k joined the PPF Group&rsquo;s global business conglomerate 16 years ago by taking over the helm of human resources at Home Credit. Four years later, he received a call from Petr Kellner, who made him a proverbial offer one doesn&rsquo;t refuse. Specifically, Jan&aacute;k was offered to merge two large HR Departments and take over management of human resources for PPF Group as a whole.
At 49 years old, Jan&aacute;k is experienced in weathering stormy times, even though the ride in the last year and a half has been rougher than usual. First was the chilling shock from Alaska and the fatal accident of PPF&rsquo;s founder Petr Kellner. Last January, a coup d&rsquo;&eacute;tat was attempted in Kazakhstan, where PPF owns the Home Credit Bank. Later in the year, the group had to deal with exiting Russia and transforming Home Credit&rsquo;s operations in China. The company had to lay off 50,000 people, a number corresponding to the population of a fairly large provincial town.
Currently, PPF employs around 80,000 people at its companies around the world. Jan&aacute;k admits that after years of relative calmness and prosperity, the time has now come once again to roll up the sleeves and get to work. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve had our seven fat years, but we&rsquo;re now entering a period of instability and uncertainty. Workers and businesses will be put under much more stress, and we&rsquo;ll need dig in and work that much harder,&rdquo; says a man who considers PPF a family business where, figuratively speaking, Excel tables are more important than PowerPoint presentations. &ldquo;For us, substance is more important than form. Another thing is that we use praise sparingly. But when we do praise someone, it&rsquo;s always personal and it is meaningful.&rdquo;
Developments this year have shaken up business and politics around the world. How has PPF coped? It all started just after the start of the year in the winter holidays. I received a call from our associates in Kazakhstan who told me that the situation there was deteriorating. Events very rapidly escalated into massive unrest, which the government there responded to by shutting down the Internet and restricting telephone communications with foreign countries. The families of our executives there were cut off from sources of information. All they could hear was gunfire and grenade explosions. The youngest child of one of our employees was six months old.
Our employees were trying to call the head office to see if we could arrange an airlift out of the country. At a times like that, management manuals are useless. First, we found a way to let our staff know about the current developments in Almaty. The next step was finding somebody who would protect them and our premises and operations in Kazakhstan. We also started preparing an escape route from Kazakhstan for our employees and their families. In the end, it wasn&rsquo;t necessary. We even managed to keep our branches operating. They only suffered a few broken windows and doors.
Such a dramatic beginning to the year! Last year began tragically for you, with Petr Kellner&rsquo;s death in March. Did PPF have any processes ready for the eventuality of the owner&rsquo;s death? We had no special provisions for such an extraordinary situation. Even though both Ladislav Barton&iacute;ček and Ren&aacute;ta Kellnerov&aacute; were outside the country, we made arrangements within a few hours to let the public and our employees know that PPF management would be taken over by Mr. Barton&iacute;ček. During the first week, PPF Gate in Dejvice was so quiet that you could hear a pin drop. Our top executives also understood their responsibilities and resolved to preserve the company&rsquo;s operations under any circumstances. The truth is that we&rsquo;re a rather small corporation, and most of us had a closer relationship to Petr Kellner than would be customary in the corporate world, where you might meet the boss only once a year at the Christmas party.
What legacy has Petr Kellner left at PPF? A business-like approach that&rsquo;s deeply ingrained in our company&rsquo;s DNA. We pay very close attention to make sure that all our business decisions make sense. That has remained and will stay unchanged. When we make an acquisition or put a project together, we don&rsquo;t allow ourselves to be sweet-talked into making a deal. We rely on Excel rather than PowerPoint. The way we see it, substance prevails over form.
Usually, a person who wanted funds for an investment had to defend the project with Kellner himself. How difficult is it to convince PPF Group&rsquo;s current boss, Jiř&iacute; &Scaron;mejc? I think that Jiř&iacute; is very good with figures too! But seriously, his approach is different because he is a different person. The biggest difference is that Jiř&iacute; is more in favour of cooperation and investment partnerships, whereas Petr Kellner preferred complete control. To convince Jiř&iacute;, you have to explain every last detail.
Recently, &Scaron;mejc said that PPF&rsquo;s planned expansion into Western markets might be facilitated by Czechs working harder and innovating more quickly than is customary in the West. What is the work ethics like among PPF&rsquo;s employees? We go against the current &ndash; we don&rsquo;t say that work is mainly supposed to be a lot of fun and amusement. In the business world, the devil is in the detail, but you have to work hard to get there. If you don&rsquo;t, your business will not work. Accomplishments don&rsquo;t just land in your lap. The way it works is that you try 15 ideas, and in the end, one of them will stick. Also, an excellent idea is just the beginning. You have to incorporate it into your organization, which includes thousands of people. That&rsquo;s the kind of work that must be done for a venture to have any chance of being successful. Often, when you meet managers in Western countries, you can&rsquo;t but help notice that companies there employ a high number of extremely spoiled, entitled people. We don&rsquo;t hire managers with an attitude like that.
We&rsquo;ve gone through a decade when everything was falling into place, everything was easy to predict. It was easy to launch new business ventures. Now, we&rsquo;re entering a period of instability and uncertainty. Workers and businesses will be put under much more stress, and we&rsquo;ll need to dig in and work that much harder. We&rsquo;ve had our seven fat years.
The seven lean years are now coming. Are you planning any specific assistance for employees this autumn in view of the current financially difficult times? As early as August, Jiř&iacute; &Scaron;mejc and I agreed that we would speedily review wages to lessen the burden on our low-income employees. Usually, a remuneration review is carried out in spring when wages are increased depending on the business results. Last spring, however, we felt that a recession might come, and we therefore set aside two percent of the personnel budget to deal with the current situation. Now with the arrival of autumn, we&rsquo;ve already started assisting our low-income employees as a gesture of solidarity.
Who is considered a low-income employee at PPF? We&rsquo;re already disbursing assistance to rank-and-file workers who earn about 50,000 crowns monthly before taxes. For employees in specialized roles who have higher incomes above this threshold, raises are approved on an individual basis. However, higher incomes might not even be enough to offset rapidly rising costs of living. If your wife is on maternity leave, you live in Prague, you have a mortgage to pay, and there are two kids running around, an increase in your mortgage instalments might put you in a situation that is difficult to cope with.
Recently, PPF Group had to lay off 50,000 people because of its exit from Russia and China. How hard is it to lay off a town of the size of Karlovy Vary in China? Not easy, but it&rsquo;s even more difficult to recruit that many workers. In our glory days, we had 100,000 employees in China. For several years, we hired 5,000 people every month on average. Can you imagine signing 5,000 employment agreements every month? It meant we had to process around 100,000 resumes monthly. Nobody in Europe can tell you how to cope with that amount of work. Because recruiting staff this way was very expensive, we set up an intensive programme of digitalization and staff reduction more than two years ago. Instead of call centres with large numbers of operators, the most being in China, we deployed chatbots and other virtual tools to communicate with customers. Thanks to that, it was easier to lay off staff when it became necessary. Worker protection in China and Russia is similar to that in our country. Like here, there are requirements for the notice period and severance pay.
Chinese workers are specific in the sense that they are very prone to complaining, and, conversely, local authorities are highly receptive. Generally speaking, though, the instincts we acquired in the Czech culture can be transposed to eastern countries because labour laws there stipulate in a great detail and a very prescriptive fashion what is permitted and what is not.
During the pandemic, many companies switched to hybrid working arrangements that combined working at home and in the office, and many businesses have continued to use this model. A lot of people are saying that they never again want to work in the office five days a week. Your company is rumoured to have a strict policy in this respect. Are your employees allowed to work from home? Our staff were offered telecommuting arrangements long before the term &lsquo;home office&rsquo; was even used in this context. Employees can ask their supervisors to work from home if they need to, and their requests are accepted if permitted by the circumstances. If a work from home request is rejected, it&rsquo;s not the end of the world either. I think that it&rsquo;s normal to go to work, to the office. Accordingly, we don&rsquo;t have an across-the-board remote work policy.
When the pandemic erupted, we could only estimate the effect of the lockdowns on work performance and the workplace climate. Now we know. People have become more distant. Data show that lasting remote work is detrimental to productivity, loyalty, team spirit, and customer orientation. It&rsquo;s not that work can&rsquo;t be done from home, it&rsquo;s that working from home changes the nature of the relationship between the employee and the employer. Employment is specific in the sense that the employer not only specifies the work to be done, but also stipulates how. If employment morphs into an arrangement along the lines of &lsquo;do the job, I don&rsquo;t care how&rsquo;, workers become contractors as opposed to employees.
You mean that employees working remotely feel being part of PPF to a lesser extent? Exactly. For example, I&rsquo;m an accountant who processes incoming invoices in the company&rsquo;s electronic system under a work from home arrangement. The competition calls and offers a salary five thousand crowns higher. I say, why not, it doesn&rsquo;t matter whether I process invoices for this guy or that guy. What do I care who I work for since I don&rsquo;t meet my co-workers anyway?
It&rsquo;s also easier to resolve mishaps in person at the office, too. Instead of writing lengthy reproachful e-mails, a five-minute face-to-face meeting does the trick. Likewise, giving praise is much better in person. At PPF, we use praise sparingly, but when we do, it&rsquo;s always personal and meaningful.
How do you respond to questions from job applicants about work from home? We lose many of them because we say no. The situation on the labour market today is such that job applicants insist during the interview on having at least three days a week of working remotely, and they have to be Monday, Thursday and Friday. What is this?
Many companies are trying to win their employees&rsquo; loyalty by offering special benefits, and there is much more talk about a four-day working week. What do you think about that? What in-kind fringe benefits work best for you? My opinion is that we&rsquo;re currently facing many other, much more serious problems, both as individuals and organizations. Because of that, a debate about a four-day working week is irrelevant. As to fringe benefits, we are a modestly conservative company, and that reflects in the benefits we offer as well. We support access to high-quality healthcare, and we contribute for retirement savings. We provide benefits in both good times and bad times, and we don&rsquo;t cut back on them for the sake of temporarily reducing costs.
There seems to be competition on the market now about who will give more, who will go further, who will offer greater variety. Because workers don&rsquo;t want to return to the office, companies are trying to bribe them with all sorts of goodies. They offer things like fresh bananas or massages to make employees get up more cheerfully in the morning. My lasting opinion about this is that people won&rsquo;t work more joyfully and productively because of bananas or higher-value restaurant vouchers. Each company has to decide which route to take. Competing with others is also a possibility &ndash; I see that the technology company next door distributes bananas, so I do the same. And not only do I give out bananas, I treat employees with an avocado, too. But next week, the company next door starts giving the staff mangos. What then?
The other option is intentionally avoiding this type of race and staying true to your values and corporate culture. It doesn&rsquo;t make sense to play the market&rsquo;s game and act like you&rsquo;re someone else yet be upset about having to play ball at the same time. Because if you act this way, you&rsquo;re sending the wrong signal to the labour market, and you&rsquo;re hiring people who you shouldn&rsquo;t because they don&rsquo;t match your corporate culture. Hypocrisy doesn&rsquo;t pay in the long run. Sure, I do get under pressure every once in a while, when co-workers warn me that if we don&rsquo;t offer the Multisport Card, we simply won&rsquo;t find IT specialists. But in the end, things work out even if you don&rsquo;t bow to the pressure. Which means that our company doesn&rsquo;t offer a sports card.
In the past, PPF used to shy away from disclosing details about its structure. Today, the company is seen on the market as an all-stars team that everybody wants to be a part of. What things about PPF do employees like in internal surveys? What do they want to improve? The time of keeping a low profile is gone. We now communicate much more than we did in the past. Starting this year, our website features a menu tab for careers and searching for vacant positions at all of our companies.
As far as improvements, our employees are calling for more empathy throughout the group. Sometimes, we resolve an issue, pat ourselves on the back, and think that is all there is to it. However, quite a few of the highly capable professionals we employ have difficulty in appropriate ways of communicating and explaining to others what we do and why. The trick is to use a form that is embraced by others. That&rsquo;s something we sometimes struggle with.
You&rsquo;ve been with PPF for 16 years. Where does your loyalty stem from? Years ago, I came to PPF from the telecommunications business, which was going through its golden period. Money was readily available, and just about any idea could be tried. After joining the group, I found that the working environment here was brutally pragmatic. Anything that doesn&rsquo;t have a tangible impact on our business gets rejected. Nobody in the company is impressed if I tell them that we have the best assessment centre for job candidates in Central Europe.
There were times when I was asking myself what I was doing here, I felt underappreciated. But I&rsquo;m right where things are happening! I don&rsquo;t need to deal with implementing concepts imposed on me from far away, even if they make no sense to me. At times, we make mistakes, but we always know why things didn&rsquo;t work out. The independence to do things the way I want is what I appreciate about PPF, and that&rsquo;s why I&rsquo;m still here.
The truth is that we&rsquo;re a rather small corporation, and most of us had a closer relationship to Petr Kellner than would be customary in the corporate world.
Working at night too? In his role, Petr Jan&aacute;k is responsible for staffing all the restaurants run by PPF. Recently, HR specialists were looking for staff for the SILQ restaurant, which is an extension of the Caf&eacute; Sofa concept at the PPF Gate building in Prague. The new restaurant was inspired by the cuisine of countries along the ancient Silk Road that connected Asia with the Mediterranean. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s more difficult to find a good waiter than a manager. A waiter comes for an interview and in the middle of it sadly says &ndash; wow, so I&rsquo;d have to work in the evening too&hellip;&rdquo;
Sometimes you realize that Western companies are producing high numbers of extremely spoiled, entitled people. We don&rsquo;t hire managers with an attitude like that. It doesn&rsquo;t make sense to play the market&rsquo;s game and act like you&rsquo;re someone else yet be upset about having to play ball at the same time.
As to fringe benefits, we are a modestly conservative company, and that reflects in the benefits we offer as well. We support access to high-quality healthcare, and we contribute for retirement savings. We provide benefits in both good times and bad times, and we don&rsquo;t cut back on them for the sake of temporarily reducing costs,&rdquo; says Petr Jan&aacute;k.
Author: Text: Jan Z&aacute;lusk&yacute;, Zuzana Kem&eacute;nyov&aacute; Source (Czech only): <a href="https://archiv.hn.cz/c1-67124900-v-ppf-malo-chvalime-a-dbame-na-detail-rika-jeji-hr-reditel">https://archiv.hn.cz/c1-67124900-v-ppf-malo-chvalime-a-dbame-na-detail-rika-jeji-hr-reditel</a>

<h4>Petr Jan&aacute;k (49)</h4>
HR Director, PPF Group
A native of Dvůr Kr&aacute;lov&eacute; nad Labem, a graduate of the Faculty of Economics and Management at the Technical University of Ostrava, Petr Jan&aacute;k holds an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh&rsquo;s Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business. Before joining PPF in 2006, he was a human resources executive at RWE, T-Mobile, and GE Capital. He has served as consultant in the international human resources consultancy Accord Group and as executive director at a small staffing agency. Petr Jan&aacute;k is married and has five children. His hobbies include skiing, cycling and scuba diving.

Interview for Hospodarske noviny

ESG is not an advantage, it is a necessity.

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Yettel

CETIN Group

PPF Telecom Group B.V.

PPF Group&rsquo;s telecommunications division is a leading provider of telecommunications services in Central and South-eastern Europe. Its companies in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Serbia have long invested in modern telecommunications infrastructure, which they continue to develop.
The group operates in stable markets with positive trends, supportive of sustainable business growth. They are characterised by rational competitive environment required for healthy ARPU and steady market shares.

PPF Telecom Group companies are split into two segments: end-user services and infrastructure. PPF pioneered structural separation of commercial services, operating under O2 and Telenor brands (Yettel as of March 2022), from infrastructure owners and operators, consolidated in CETIN Group.
CETIN&rsquo;s subsidiaries in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Serbia offer wholesale mobile and fixed network infrastructure services to all telecommunications companies in the market on equal terms. The&nbsp;commercial arm of the group provides services to end users in the consumer, corporate and public segments, under O2 and Yettel brands. Their proposition comprises mobile voice, data and text messaging, fixed broadband, multi-platform internet television, fixed voice lines and corporate data networks.

In 2021, PPF Telecom Group reported solid revenue growth, achieved with contributions from all its brands and companies. The customer base is expanding and improving in all of the group&rsquo;s countries, in large part due to a long-term strategy structured around the operation of top-grade telecommunications networks and the delivery of a superior customer experience. The group&rsquo;s companies report generate predictable cash flows resilient to business cycle changes and adverse global influences, which in 2021 included the COVID-19 pandemic and its&nbsp;economic repercussions.
PPF Telecom Group operated stateof-the-art 5G mobile networks in most markets by the end of&nbsp;2021. The&nbsp;roll-out of 5G&nbsp;networks is accelerated by&nbsp;the sharing of&nbsp;expertise and resources within CETIN Group&rsquo;s infrastructure division. In the years ahead, 5G services will be driving the next wave of innovation and growth.

Netherlands

PPF Telecom Group consolidates PPF Group&rsquo;s investments in telecommunications (CETIN Group, Yettel, and O2 Group).

At the turn of the year, PPF Telecom Group companies in the Czech Republic and Slovakia signed cooperation agreements with Ericsson for the construction of 5G networks and radio access network upgrades. Once they are in possession of this state-of-the-art innovative technology for the full spectrum of frequencies they use, they will be able to deliver new services to end customers, offer a wide range of applications across industries, and help to drive forward the digital economy.

Secure 5G Technology

Key Financials

“The digital economy is underpinned by high-quality telecommunications services and secure communications infrastructure for operators. We are proud to be contributing to its development in countries across Central and South-eastern Europe.”  

PPF Telecom Group

PPF Telecom Group recently published its first ESG report. But why? There are no standards for evaluating companies in this area.
For the Group, it is not just the reporting that is important, but the philosophy itself. Sustainability is an essential part of how we think about business. Our companies were involved in a range of sustainable activities before the concept of ESG came along, and so the report is a way of showing what we are already doing and want to achieve. The societies and environments where we do business are changing, and if we want to be successful in ten or fifteen years&rsquo; time, we need to respond to these changes. We also know that we need to prepare for the time when ESG reporting becomes mandatory. Simply collecting the data is a major undertaking for a company of our size.
Did you produce an overall ESG score with the report, or did you just assess your current situation and set goals for the future?
We will submit a rating in a future step. For now, we have built a strategy that we want to pursue to develop sustainability in our business and have committed to concrete goals and plans for the coming years.
Could you be more specific?
The company has committed to halving its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and moving towards carbon neutrality. For the first time ever, we have mapped our own carbon footprint. Today, it is about 859,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, which means that we want to get that figure to somewhere around 430,000 tonnes within eight years. We were already doing a lot of sustainable activities before the ESG wave started. We are just now defining a formal strategy and targets at the group level for these activities and will report on them regularly.
In the report, you separated greenhouse gas emissions into three categories. Why?
Because we think this will be important over time. And it&rsquo;s a best practice. At the start, we can focus only on ourselves and consumption, which are the first two categories, but if we really want to meet our reduced emissions targets by 2030, we will also need to reduce consumption through our entire supply chain and the life cycles of our products. We have found that up to two-thirds of emissions are not produced by PPF Telecom Group directly but collectively by its suppliers, for example, from using mobile phones or servers. It will be important in the future to work with suppliers to reduce their emissions or even choose suppliers based on their carbon footprint.
How do you specifically plan to reduce the Group&rsquo;s greenhouse gas emissions?
We are definitely planning further energy saving measures, and we are talking about purchasing green energy and contracting our electricity needs from energy source operators through long-term PPA contracts. We are also thinking about investing in our own solar power plants. CETIN, for example, already uses almost 70 percent renewable energy in Serbia. Electronic waste is another major environmental concern linked to the entire telecommunications industry. Our companies are already promoting phone recycling and reducing the volume of waste produced. We already have several projects running in this area, now we want to support them with a strategy at the group level.
To summarise this part, how much will it cost you?
That&rsquo;s a premature question for now. We have several projects and ideas on the table, but we are not yet able to quantify the total cost.
How does PPF Telecom Group approach social issues &nbsp;&ndash; S?
The letter S looks at areas where the business has some significant societal or economic impact. In our case, it means the construction of modern telecommunications infrastructure and providing high quality, safe and affordable services to as many people as possible, including in rural and sparsely populated areas. We are committed to providing state-of-the-art 5G technology to at least 50 percent of the population by 2024 and 80 percent by 2027. Our responsibility in developing digital literacy and looking after our employees is also significant.
I confess that I expected you to mention more non-profit activities for this category. Do you think that developing a 5G network, which you promised in the spectrum auction, can be considered a social responsibility?
The purpose of telecommunications is to connect people and businesses, to support the digitalisation of society and the economy. From this perspective, our work has a clear and positive impact on society. The Covid-19 pandemic, which hopefully we have seen the worst of, has clearly shown the importance of digital connectivity, yet no-one seems to want to guess what this time may have looked like without digital infrastructure. We also run a range of educational projects, which is exactly the type of community service you are talking about. I wanted to say though that we feel it is important for our business itself to be sustainable and that we remain successful from a financial point of view. At PPF, the mindset that sustainability and profitability go hand in hand is a key approach. Otherwise, without profitable businesses, we will certainly not achieve sustainability. Sometimes I feel that not everyone realises this.
What about the last letter &ndash; G?
When it comes to governance, our companies&rsquo; functions, processes and reporting behaviours must meet all standards. Nothing changes there for us. What we need to do in this area is incorporate the principles of sustainability into managing our supply chain.
Many telecommunications companies are also specifying targets to include more women in management. Is that the path you want to take?
It&rsquo;s not really a question of choice but when, although we may be a little behind the curve in this since our industry is very technical and is traditionally associated with a male domain. Building infrastructure is about installing technology on pylons, excavating and so on, so it is a challenge. On the commercial side of our business, where it&rsquo;s more about the relationships with our customers, and in marketing, we&rsquo;ve been quite successful with career growth for women.
But do you have specific targets, for example, for having at least one woman in management in each country?
We have goals, but we start from the bottom. First, we want to support the careers of the women who already work for us to move up to higher levels of management.
There is some discussion as to whether it is worthwhile for some companies not to address ESG and face public scorn but be more profitable. Does that make sense to you?
I don&rsquo;t think so. Already now, when the rules have not even been harmonised, companies are competing through ESG in the bond market, for example. In this context, we absolutely cannot afford to be left behind.
Do you expect PPF Telecom&rsquo;s first ESG report to have positive effects on the company&rsquo;s performance?
The expectation that companies should actively contribute to solving current social and environmental problems is growing, and we are already seeing action in our markets on environmental protection as a way for companies to define themselves against the competition. In other words, we are also seeing ESG-related activities as opportunities to further develop our business.
Many companies say that the emphasis on ESG has brought them lower interest rates. Do you feel the same way?
As far as financing is concerned, our report puts us among companies that can tap into so-called &lsquo;green money&rsquo;. That&rsquo;s also why we saw the move as inevitable. When we started reporting a year ago, an ESG strategy could still give someone a financial advantage over their competitors. Today, ESG is standard among our competitors. But companies that don&rsquo;t try to improve themselves with ESG reporting may find it more difficult to access funding. Going against the tide may work in the short term, but in the long term, the pressure will be so enormous that any company which ignores ESG will not survive. And it isn&rsquo;t just about the European Commission or banks or investors, but mainly about the customers and employees who will consider how responsibly a company behaves. A lot of people are already doing this now.
You mentioned that the rules for ESG haven&rsquo;t been set up yet. Who will you get a rating from?
A number of rating agencies are operating on the market today, so we will target those that our investors are using the most. We are also following the preparations for the new European CSRD, which will make non-financial reporting mandatory from 2026, so for the year 2025 already. This will clarify areas for reporting and create uniform standards for companies to disclose key information. Several areas still have uncertainties, but I expect that by mid-decade at the latest, clear rules will have been set for all aspects of ESG.
<a href="https://www.ppf.eu/assets/1665653094-ppf-telecom-group_2021-sustainability-report.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">PPF Telecom Group Sustainability Report</a>
Author: Ondřej Souček
Source (Czech only): <a href="https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.e15.cz%2Farticle%2F1393767%3Fopenpremium%3Da9b28a1593f572d70bb276dbaadc48bb&amp;data=05%7C01%7Cprusa%40ppf.cz%7Cab7d29d25b57497a3b8408dab02f0547%7C5ae9dff0870147f6a00b343f3cd6bc20%7C0%7C0%7C638016013234602585%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=GuMrusocB3R9gG6tkkDTdTheczoCc7JMR%2Fm7Aqzmwdk%3D&amp;reserved=0">https://www.e15.cz/article/1393767?openpremium=a9b28a1593f572d70bb276dbaadc48bb</a>

Interview for E15 magazine

Let’s not waste the opportunity to pat ourselves on the back

https://www.datocms-assets.com/40359/1665752655-forbes-cz-2022-10-06-skoda-se-nepochlubit.jpg?auto=format&fit=max&w=1200

Škoda Group

The flagship of the &Scaron;koda Group is &Scaron;koda Transportation. An important arm of the group is TEMSA, which it controls jointly with Sabanci Holding. The group&rsquo;s key business regions are the Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, the Baltics, Poland, and Slovakia.
&Scaron;koda Group develops a full range of public transport solutions for trains, trams, the metro, trolleybuses, and various types of buses, accompanied by&nbsp;comprehensive servicing and maintenance. The group is moving increasingly towards sustainable transport of the future and solutions for the data-driven, connected mobility infrastructure of future smart cities using 5G connectivity. The group has a digital division dedicated to the development and innovation of digital, control, and diagnostic systems for vehicles. &Scaron;koda Group&rsquo;s vehicles are environmentally friendly, with almost all of them running purely on electricity and producing no emissions. In 2021, &Scaron;koda also launched the development of a new-generation hydrogen drive buses.

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, &Scaron;koda Group still significantly increased its profitability, sales, and new orders in 2021. Despite global supply chain problems and labour shortages, &Scaron;koda scaled up production and launched new projects for foreign markets, reflecting its status as a leading exporter that dispatches some 60% of its orders abroad. In 2021, the group recorded sales of EUR 614 million, EBITDA of EUR 45 million, and a net profit of EUR 33 million. The number of group employees increased by 26% year on year to some 6,500 (8,000 including TEMSA). There was also a solid rise in the volume of work contracted, which increased to around EUR 3.6 billion.* This means that the group&rsquo;s production capacity will be full until approximately 2025. In 2021, &Scaron;koda invested EUR 71 million in, among other things, an increase in production capacity in Plzeň, Ostrava, and &Scaron;umperk.
*Unaudited consolidated figures based on international accounting standards for the 2021 financial year. Revenues do not include TEMSA&rsquo;s results as this company is consolidated using the IFRS equity method. The number of employees at TEMSA (a 50% joint venture) is included in the total.

In 2021, Ostrava-based Ekova Electric (now &Scaron;koda Ekova) was incorporated into &Scaron;koda Group and added the production of new trams to its existing servicing and upgrading operations. Last year, &Scaron;koda Group delivered RegioPanter electric trains and InterJet carriages to its largest railways customer, Česk&eacute; dr&aacute;hy, and introduced new-generation push-pull trains for the Moravian-Silesian Region. During the year, the group made trainsets for the Warsaw metro and trams for German cities, and progressed to further stages in the delivery of solutions to the cities of Plzeň and Ostrava. Trams for Riga and NIM Express trains for Germany were also delivered. New contracts include the delivery of electric trains to&nbsp;Slovakia and trolleybuses for a number of European cities. The delivery of the first electric buses for Prague was an electromobility milestone.

Hungary

Finland

Poland

Germany

An international leader in public transport solutions. &Scaron;koda is consolidating its market position by innovating, digitalising, and broadening its extensive portfolio of vehicles and services. &Scaron;koda Group&rsquo;s growth has facilitated significant investment in production capacity and jobs.

At all sites where it operates, &Scaron;koda Group supports education and CSR activities, promotes topics related to transportation and mechanical engineering, and cooperates with technical universities.
&Scaron;koda Group is a long-term partner to sports clubs in the regions where it operates, such as Pilsen&rsquo;s HC &Scaron;koda Plzeň Extraliga club, the First Hockey League club Draci Pars &Scaron;umperk, Ostrava's football team Ban&iacute;k, and the athletics club &Scaron;koda Plzeň. In Pilsen, it is also the sponsor of the &Scaron;koda Sport Park and the &Scaron;kodaland sports complexes. &Scaron;koda Plzeň also supports the Městsk&aacute; charita Plzeň (a municipal charitable organization), Ovahelp in Ostrava, and many more individuals and organizations.

Supporting Local Communities

„Innovation, engineering excellence and focus on sustainability and data-driven transportation solutions are making Škoda a strong element of future mobility.“

&ldquo;It&rsquo;s impressive, isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; asks Stanislav Kuba rhetorically, pointing to the sprawling factory compound ahead. And it really is, because the area where we are standing is hard to fully take in. When you look from the ground, there is no end in sight. The best thing to do is to climb to the headquarters roof of the &Scaron;koda Group near the entry gates of its main factory in Pilsen to get a view of what was once synonymous with the success of Czech, or rather Austro-Hungarian, manufacturing. The Pilsen works&rsquo; foundations were laid by Emil &Scaron;koda, the 19th century founder of the steel forges and machinery and cannon maker in this western Czech town near the German border. Today, Stanislav Kuba, a Czech investment manager of PPF Group, is in charge of the investment company&rsquo;s industrial pride which still stands on the grounds of the original forges. Mr. Kuba, in the position of Supervisory Board Chairman, runs &Scaron;koda Group, which also operates other factories in Finland and in the northeast of Czechia, alongside Didier Pfleger. The French-born manager is the CEO of &Scaron;koda Group. Together, the Kuba-Pfleger tandem is responsible for returning the industrial holding to its former glory.
&nbsp;And it is working. In 2021, &Scaron;koda Group, known primarily for tram, locomotive and trolleybus production, increased its sales by 40% year-on-year to more than 15 billion koruna, generating an operating profit before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of over 1 billion koruna, up 178% from the year earlier. The Group is currently working through its order book of contracted projects worth more than 81 billion koruna. &ldquo;We have to deliver on time and in top quality. That&rsquo;s what our business is about &ndash; you have to rely on us one hundred percent. Our industrial B2G business is specific in this &ndash; there is absolutely no marketing or any pipe dreams,&rdquo; laughs Pfleger, who joined &Scaron;koda Group last February when PPF lured him at the end of 2021 from Alstom, one of the biggest competitors of the investment company&rsquo;s industry jewel. Just to give an idea &ndash; Alstom&rsquo;s sales last year exceeded 380 billion koruna, which only proves that &Scaron;koda Group has a lot of room for growth. Mr. Pfleger&rsquo;s appointment was a major personnel achievement of PPF, but it didn&rsquo;t stop there. Skoda Group has snatched a new sales director from Bombardier and a number of other top Czech and foreign managers. Mr. Pfleger was tasked by the former PPF Group chief executive, Ladislav Barton&iacute;ček, to leverage his &Scaron;koda Group start management team to get the company into the top league of European manufacturers, expanding its geographic reach.
&nbsp;So why did he accept the position in Pilsen? &ldquo;PPF is an extremely interesting company. They are involved in private equity, but in many ways, they operate as a family business and have a long-term outlook. Although I&rsquo;m French, I&rsquo;ve never worked in France, so moving to the Czech Republic wasn&rsquo;t really a problem. The major challenge is actually the language. I&rsquo;ve always spoken either English or German at work, but here, unfortunately, I can&rsquo;t even read a newspaper, let alone speak to people in Czech,&rdquo; shrugs the smiling Pfleger. However, the head of &Scaron;koda Transportation has a number of challenges ahead of him. And he doesn&rsquo;t have enough spare time to study Czech. &ldquo;&Scaron;koda Group has to become a more international company. So far, it has largely focused on business in Czechia, but in this industry, you have to have to be where your customers are. They want to see you locally, in their own environment, so you need to have certain production capacities, engineering capacities and project management in those areas,&rdquo; says Pfleger. During the conversation with Forbes, the French manager is so clearly in sync with Kuba, making one thing the two have been working together forever. They do not interrupt each other, merely nodding in agreement when the other speaks.
&ldquo;All our efforts are directed towards making &Scaron;koda Group a stable business. For that, you need the three pillars of diversity. The first is the geographical diversity that Didier just mentioned. The second is project variety, because if you only have a few big projects, missing one can put you behind very quickly. Finally, you need product diversity, which is why our portfolio has variety &ndash; from buses to trains,&rdquo; adds Kuba.
&hellip;
&nbsp;If you, like this article&rsquo;s writer, know about the details of transport equipment manufacturing as little as you do about the plants and flowers of Central Africa, a walk with Didier Pfleger and Stanislav Kuba on &Scaron;koda&rsquo;s precincts is an extraordinary experience. In these extensive halls, an uninitiated soul might only recognize the bodies of trams known from European cities, understandably mainly from Prague. Large gearboxes and railway wheels make their backdrop, while the smell of enamel wafts from the paint shop. For the uninitiated, the giant tunnel where rolling stock can unusually move sideways is also fascinating. That technical marvel alone represents investments worth hundreds of millions of koruna. Here again, on the testing track, a vehicle is checked whether it satisfies the quality parameters Pfleger just talked about.
&nbsp;In this environment lined with thousands of components, we naturally wonder about the extent to which &Scaron;koda Group&rsquo;s supply chain is still affected by the pandemic. Don&rsquo;t be alarmed &ndash; the Group&rsquo;s key advantage is that it does not outsource production in China or India, it manufactures nearly all of its own components in factories in the Czech Republic or Finland. &ldquo;This clearly shows the difference between our company and the car makers, supplying end-users, since many of them have suspended their operations because of a lack of components. We can&rsquo;t afford that. Our customers are governments and municipalities &ndash; and they don&rsquo;t like to wait,&rdquo; emphasizes Kuba. This is also why a business that appears cumbersome at first glance can also be adventurous.
&nbsp;&ldquo;Of course, every now and then, problems occur with a component, because a supplier might go bankrupt. But we can live with that. Right now, for example, we are dealing with a large and high-profile order by the Latvian rail company. We had planned to deliver the train systems via Ukraine, using the same wide gauge tracks as in Latvia. Then the war started, so putting our trains on the Ukrainian tracks was out of the game. Ultimately, we stacked the sets onto trucks piece by piece, drove them overland via Poland to Latvia, and then assembled them on site. That&rsquo;s how serious deadlines are in our business,&rdquo; laughs Pfleger. &ldquo;Sitting idly and waiting isn&rsquo;t an option. It&rsquo;s simple as that. Getting up and doing is the only way to move forward,&rdquo; adds Kuba.
&nbsp;As already mentioned, &Scaron;koda Group&rsquo;s customers are mainly governments and municipalities, and public tenders are therefore absolutely essential to &Scaron;koda&rsquo;s business. &ldquo;Of course, tenders are different,&rdquo; explains Pfleger. &ldquo;Somewhere, the only important aspect is the price, elsewhere they look beyond it. But generally, we can say that eastern markets care more about the first aspect and western ones are more concerned about others. Either way, our business is a business of reputation. If you want to succeed, you have to be synonymous with reliability. I&rsquo;m knocking on wood here, because once &Scaron;koda delivers, we see virtually no problems. In other words, any complaints we deal with are minimal.&rdquo;
&hellip;
It is clear from the business definition of &Scaron;koda Group that the name itself is not as important as its near namesake passenger car maker &Scaron;koda Auto. It was the name, or rather the trademark and logo, which was the subject of a legal dispute between the owners of &Scaron;koda of Pilsen and &Scaron;koda of Mlad&aacute; Boleslav, where &Scaron;koda-badged passenger cars are made, for many years. The dispute was finally resolved for good this July. &ldquo;&Scaron;koda Group may use the &Scaron;koda name and winged arrow logo until 2029,&rdquo; PPF said in the summer. It is not certain yet what the &Scaron;koda Group works in Pilsen will be called or what the company&rsquo;s new logo will be post-2029. What is certain, however, is that PPF collected billions of koruna from the sale of rights, although it does not want to talk about the exact amount. But billions in proceeds for PPF Group certainly prove that the &Scaron;koda brand is much more important to Volkswagen, the parent of &Scaron;koda Auto.
&nbsp;&ldquo;Very simply described, &Scaron;koda Auto is in a retail business with millions of customers and the brand has a lot of weight here. &Scaron;koda Group is a project business with a few dozen key customers, where it isn&rsquo;t your name but meeting the requirements of a public tender that wins. This is an important cause and effect sequence of the development that led to the brand&rsquo;s sale,&rdquo; explains Kuba, who led the negotiations on &nbsp;PPF&rsquo;s side. But for PPF, this will also end the absurd situation that Kuba describes as: &ldquo;The further we are from Pilsen, the more we have to explain that we are not Volkswagen.&rdquo;
&nbsp;However, just as Volkswagen, &Scaron;koda Group is looking into the future of urban mobility. Development is following the same course as passenger cars. &ldquo;We are mainly looking at the transition to clean energy. More than ten years ago, we proved that we could manufacture and operate a hydrogen-powered bus. As for locomotives, they went, to put it simply, straight from steam to electricity,&rdquo; explains Pfleger. Autonomous driving is also an integral part of the future of transportation. There, the often-smiling Frenchman remains more grounded than some automotive visionaries. &ldquo;For me personally, autonomous mobility is a matter of the next ten rather than twenty years. Of course, software is moving forward incredibly quickly, and we too are developing, for example, automated collision prevention systems. Overall, the risk of transition to autonomous operation is still too high. The existing infrastructure also needs to be completely rebuilt. And I&rsquo;m not even delving into the required legislative changes.&rdquo;
&hellip;
Whether the largest Czech capital powerhouse still owns &Scaron;koda Group when the era of autonomous systems arrives, of course, remains to be seen. Even after our discussion though, it is clear that the PPF doesn&rsquo;t seek to flip the &Scaron;koda Group assets to any highest bidder in the foreseeable future. &Scaron;koda Group currently accounts for nearly 5% of PPF Group equity, and the Czech-French pair believes that this share will continue growing. &ldquo;&Scaron;koda Group is different from other PPF assets, that&rsquo;s for sure. Taking over &Scaron;koda Group was an attractive transaction for PPF that might be described adequately as opportunistic. This is all true. Nevertheless, the industrial division has an important position in diversifying PPF&rsquo;s business portfolio,&rdquo; says Kuba.
<h4>&Scaron;koda Group</h4>
PPF entered the industry sector in 2017 by taking &Scaron;koda Transportation. At the time, it paid 8.3 billion koruna to a group of the company&rsquo;s then owners, led by Tom&aacute;&scaron; Krsek, Michal Koreck&yacute; and Marek Čmejla. Today, &Scaron;koda Transportation is part of the &Scaron;koda Group, which includes several companies &ndash; bus maker &Scaron;koda Electric, rolling stock repair company &Scaron;koda Pars, railcar maker &Scaron;koda Vagonka and the Finland-based train and streetcar maker &Scaron;koda Transtech. The entire group employs over 6,200 people.
Source (Czech only): <a href="https://forbes.cz/ppf-dlouho-nemela-v-portfoliu-velke-prumyslove-podniky-pak-prisla-plzenska-skoda/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://forbes.cz/ppf-dlouho-nemela-v-portfoliu-velke-prumyslove-podniky-pak-prisla-plzenska-skoda/</a>
Text: Zdravko Krstanov Photo: Michael Tome&scaron;

Didier Pfleger and Stanislav Kuba for Forbes CZ

“Either You Make People Cry or Laugh, or You Don’t Succeed in the TV Business,” Says CME Head Didier Stoessel 

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CME MEDIA ENTERPRISES B.V.

CME MEDIA SERVICES LIMITED Czech Republic

CME&rsquo;s operations include 43 television channels broadcasting to approximately 49 million people in the Czech Republic, Croatia, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia.&nbsp;
CME pursues a strategy addressing to the global shift of consumer viewing habits from linear television to a subscription video on demand (SVOD) viewing model. It practices a windowing strategy aimed at maximizing monetization of its content across multiple distribution channels. CME leverages its traditional B2B business model where its revenues are largely driven by advertising and carriage fees, while growing direct distribution services to B2C SVOD customers. To execute its strategy, CME has embarked on complete digital transformation following its acquisition by PPF Group and aims to further its position as among the leading content producers across its markets in Central and Eastern Europe (Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia). This large-scale investment in production is yielding a more diverse and innovative range of SVOD programming.
Extensive investment in local production is one of the principles underpinning CME&rsquo;s continued growth. Locally produced content accounted for approximately two thirds of the total cost of content broadcast in 2021. In terms of acquired content, in 2021, CME acquired rights to broadcast high-profile European football matches in the UEFA Champions League, the UEFA Europa League, the Euro 2024 and 2028 tournaments, the Bundesliga, La Liga, and Serie A, also CME launched two new sports channels. Live sports are set to be another catalyst for growth in the years ahead.

News programmes are an important element of programming, as they divert significant share and ratings to CME. CME&rsquo;s award-winning news teams adhere to the highest standards of journalistic ethics. They are guided by CME&rsquo;s editorial guidelines, which promote impartiality, decency, and independence.
SVOD has grown at an unprecedented rate in Europe, driven by consumers who have rapidly embraced technological advances. Investments in digitalisation and the Voyo platform have increased CME&rsquo;s subscriber base significantly in its markets. In the Czech Republic and Slovakia, subcriptions have quadrupled. This supports Voyo&rsquo;s ambition to become the leading local SVOD provider and generate growth in the digital space. It&nbsp;is projected that the majority of CEE households will have two to three SVOD subscriptions within five years.
CME is the first media company from the CEE region to become a member of albert, the international industry authority promoting environmental sustainability in the television and film industry.

CME was founded in 1994 with the launch of TV Nova, a&nbsp;private television station in the Czech Republic. PPF completed its acquisition of the CME media group on October 13, 2020.

Information about CME Media Enterprises B.V. can be found <a href="https://www.cme.net/about-cme" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>.

Bulgaria

Romania

Slovenia

Croatia

Central European Media Enterprises (CME) is a media and entertainment company operating leading television stations in six Central and Eastern European countries.
CME invests heavily in its own production, content, and distribution platforms.

"We want to be a trend-setter driving the transformation of digital media and distribution and be among the first to offer new solutions."

Central European Media Enterprises (CME) 

Interview for Info.cz

Czech Technical University: O2 triumphs in speed tests on multiple fronts

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The Czech Technical University repeatedly measured the 5G signal coverage of all operators in spring this year. &ldquo;The fastest download speeds were measured using nPerf, with O2 hitting 704 Mbps. Speedtest returned a very similar result, measuring O2 at 636 Mbps. This makes the top rates measured on O2&rsquo;s network roughly double those of other operators. O2&rsquo;s high speeds are evidently achieved mainly by using the 3.7 GHz frequency, which allows for an ample channel width of 40 MHz,&rdquo; says Vladim&iacute;r D&aacute;ňa from the Czech Technical University&rsquo;s Cyber Resilience Centre, adding that a similar result can be seen from averaged measurements, with O2 recording an average download speed of 217 Mbps, as opposed to the competition&rsquo;s 117 Mbps and 87 Mbps.

Download speeds in a 5G network test by the CTU

The speed and technological superiority of O2&rsquo;s 5G network is supported by measurements on the NetMetr server. Here again, O2 has come top over the last six months (as of 15 July 2022) with readings that are many times better than the competition. The median download speed on O2&rsquo;s network, for example, is 185 Mbps, while the competition&rsquo;s is barely 75 Mbps. &ldquo;O2&rsquo;s lead in ping rates is just as strong. A low ping is vital for online gamers and anyone who communicates online via video calls &ndash; for example, if they are working from home. The NetMetr measurements reveal that O2 has a ping of just 14.5 ms, while its competitors come in at around 24 ms,&rdquo; says Jan Hru&scaron;ka, O2&rsquo;s chief technology officer.

Median 5G network speeds measured by NetMetr

&ldquo;Both measurements clearly show that our path of completely replacing radio technologies, which CETIN has been doing for us since last spring, delivers the fastest 5G to customers. Of course, it&rsquo;s a logistically more ambitious and costly route, but it lets O2 offer customers faster and more reliable internet, especially at greater capacity on individual transmitters and better coverage in certain areas,&rdquo; says Jan Hru&scaron;ka, O2&rsquo;s CTO, who added that addressing capacity across the entire network is a major undertaking because the volume of traffic in the network doubles every 18 months or so.
PPF Group&rsquo;s investment into network infrastructure from the European manufacturer Ericsson is paying off, enabling O2 to build a 5G network with enormous capacity that is ready for whatever the digital future may hold. This is also borne out by an Ipsos survey. Asked which operator they believe has the &ldquo;fastest 5G network&rdquo;, more than 45% of respondents answered unequivocally O2.

Survey of how users perceive 5G network speed:

The O2 5G network currently provides coverage for more than 2.6 million people in the Czech Republic. Since last May, almost 1,700 transmitters have been upgraded, with four or five technicians spending at least four days working on each of them. Around 40 new stations are being added every week. Working in partnership with CETIN, the operator plans to complete and thus improve coverage of most of the country by the end of 2024.
CTU test victory incorporated into new campaign
O2 will be running this message in a local campaign that is set to be rolled out in stages in outdoor, print and online media. &ldquo;From August to the end of October, it will feature heavily in places where the network has already been upgraded and where our customers can enjoy true 5G connectivity. Besides highlighting that O2 delivers the fastest speeds, the campaign will also illustrate how important PPF&rsquo;s investments are for the Czech Republic&rsquo;s digital future,&rdquo; says O2 marketing communications director David Dane&scaron;. This marketing communication will build on previous brand campaigns connecting PPF Group and other Group companies. Recent examples include campaigns involving CETIN and &Scaron;koda Transportation.

Support for the integration of refugees from Ukraine and schooling for their children

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In cooperation with non-profit organisations specialising in immigration issues and coordinated by the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, these projects are in development and target areas beyond the reach of the public sector where private funding has the most impact. During the initial support phase, both foundations will concentrate on printing re-editions of Czech language textbooks for all school year-levels and publishing Czech-Ukrainian dictionaries and other materials to assist Ukrainian children in their integration. These books and materials will then be distributed to schools free of charge. The foundations are organising support groups to provide language courses, raise community support and familiarise refugees with local conditions. The foundations are also broadly engaged in negotiations to set up projects to integrate Ukrainian children into the Czech society through free-time and summer-holiday activities.
Support is also specifically directed towards Prague 6 district, where PPF&rsquo;s headquarters is located. Both funding and materials have been given to the Slunečnice (Sunflower) Community Centre in Prague&nbsp;6 and certain Prague primary schools. Another Prague 6 community centre has received support for a Czech language teaching programme. Support under The Kellner Family Foundation&rsquo;s Helping Schools Succeed programme has also been channelled into schools working with Ukrainian pupils.
Material donations alongside financial support and fundraisers by PPF Group employees are an additional source of aid. The Group&rsquo;s telecommunications companies have donated prepaid SIM cards to refugee relief organisations and provided free roaming services and international calls. The electronics and household appliance retailer, FAST has worked with People in Need to donate consumer electronics. The Group continues to offer accommodation, jobs, and other services, including a website offering financial services in Ukrainian. Employee fundraisers are an ongoing source of additional material aid, gifts for children, and offers of accommodation, transport and assistance to the refugees and families from Ukraine.