Acciona continues to cultivate its particular business model, known as business as unusual, which accommodates any business initiative related to the decarbonization of the economy. There is room in there for renewable energies, shared mobility or the manufacture of your own electric car. However, when it comes to putting together the big numbers and reporting the results to investors, the group remains closely linked to its tradition of building large infrastructure. Bridging the gap, it preserves the essence of the company Entrecanales y Távora, founded in 1931 by engineers José Entrecanales and Manuel Távora to remodel the San Telmo bridge in Seville and preserve the views from the Torre del Oro.
The recently concluded year has been good, with a 22% improvement in profit, up to 541 million euros, thanks in large part to the group’s international deployment in search of new construction opportunities. The infrastructure business recorded the best performance, with record revenues of 7,723 million euros, 28% higher than the previous year, and consolidates its weight over the overall turnover of 17,021 million.
“The successful execution of complex projects has been the best credential for a record year,” commented the president of Acciona, José Manuel Entrecanales, in the presentation of the group’s results. The added value of the group lies, as he points out, in responding to the sustainability demands of new infrastructures, whether roads, desalination plants or metro networks. “There is a shortage of business actors who have the technical and financial capabilities to do it,” he said.
Acciona uses calculations from the consulting firm McKinsey to estimate the additional investments necessary around the world at 1.7 trillion dollars a year to meet the demands of electrification, industrial transformation, new data centers or hydrogen. Added to this are efforts to respond to challenges such as population growth or lack of water in urban centers. The challenges are new, but behind them lies the work of the centenary construction company – its antecedents actually date back to 1900 –, now more international and with greater added value.
Entrecanales estimates that in the group’s main markets “there are some 350,000 million euros in search of suitable investments.” It refers to the large infrastructure plans of Brazil, Spain, Australia and the United States. “The project portfolio in these countries could exceed 125 billion euros in 2024 alone,” he says. Local authorities and large clients are, in the opinion of the Spanish company, eager to develop what the president of the company calls “smart infrastructures”, in which sustainability predominates.
The group’s project portfolio is at historic levels, at 24,508 million euros, after increasing by 12% in just one year. Acciona was awarded works for 9,409 million euros in 2023, including highways and large river projects in the United States, or electrical transmission lines in Australia, one of the countries with the greatest implementation.
The group participates in the expansion of the Sydney metro for 1,205 million euros, in Vancouver for 1,100 million and in Sao Paolo, for 1,716 million. It also builds bridges, railways, hospitals and roads in America, Europe, Oceania and the Middle East. “By the end of 2024, we will have more than 17 billion euros invested in highly coveted energy and infrastructure assets,” says Entrecanales.
The infrastructure boom is complemented by the business of Acciona Energía, which at the end of last year added 13,000 installed megawatts (MW) of renewables and a portfolio to develop another 40,000. Acciona has 82% of the renewables subsidiary, which is also listed on the Ibex, and does not rule out selling an additional stake. What the company does have in place is a plan to divest about 400 MW of renewables in Spain and begin a rotation of assets that allows it to invest in new projects.
