The Polish millionaire says he’s done with the wage increase. “The budget is not made of rubber”

– Today, the biggest challenge in the industry is wage pressure. My problem is that every such statement is read by the employees, but we will not be able to increase the salary budget. Filipiac said employees need to understand this.

The millionaire added that Comarch should cut its payroll budget. The Comarch Group’s primary wage fund in 2022 was 18.8 percent lower. Higher year on year, and in the fourth quarter of last year alone, the dynamics of the payroll fund was 16.2 percent.

We have no problem with revenue, because it is increasing, but the wage pressure is so great that we cannot cope with it, and the budget is not made of rubber. I’m not talking about the salaries of individual employees, but about the salary budget for the entire Comarch group. And we were able to slow it down, but not in the same way as Amazon or Cisco or other US companies, which have laid off a total of 100,000 jobs. People, act only on points – Filipiak Rating.

Comarch’s founder emphasized that the company does not want to “make structural cuts.”

– We evaluate the work of a particular employee, his earnings and salary expectations, and we analyze the quality of the work he provides. He noted that on the basis of this information, a decision is made on possible increases.

At the end of last year, 6871 people worked in the entire Comarch group. That’s 148 more employees than in 2021.

However, Comarch, like other IT companies, is now looking at contract renegotiation options. The company’s president noted that a significant part of Comarch’s business and profitability comes from selling services abroad, as the company operates in global price conditions.

– In foreign markets, there are opportunities to raise prices, but they are limited. We are executing old contracts at rates of three or four years, but these rates cannot be maintained. That’s why we renegotiate contracts and customers understand that. However, this is not an index of all contracts. The businessman said it was just that each contract had to be renegotiated individually.

The Comarch chief stated that in the case of public contracts, Polish law allows for the possibility of renegotiating contracts, but there is no such option in commercial contracts. However, the public sector is hard on Comarch. Why? Projects related to general management are carried out by the company only on the Vistula River.

– It’s hard to make money there. We are pioneers when it comes to systems that support loyalty programs and electronic information transfer solutions – he said.

In 2021 Comarch paid 4 PLN in dividends per share. This will also be paid for this year. In addition, the company is considering expansion and acquisition of some smaller entities.

We don’t want big acquisitions. These will be acquisitions of companies that employ 30-50 people. We don’t want to take over a company that is causing us trouble that we will have to revive. We are looking for acquisition targets in Germany, France, Italy and Belgium. He explained that Belgium is probably the fastest.

Comarch’s first proprietary Comarch sales platform will be launched in June. The CEO wants to capture a large share of the e-commerce market with it, but he doesn’t give details.

– There is a gap in the e-commerce market and we want to fill it. Market expectations towards the site were high. For now, the challenge is to meet it – announced Filipiak.

There are 100,000 companies in Poland using Comarch’s ERP systems. In his opinion, it is worth investing in cloud solutions, but he is skeptical about the development of artificial intelligence.

– There is no intelligence there. These are neural networks, the scientific concept of which originated 50 years ago. He stressed that since then, not many new things have been created, and there is only more computing power.

In 2022, the Comarch Group generated revenues of PLN 1.86 billion (compared to PLN 1.63 billion in the previous year). EBITDA was PLN 241.8 million, up 13.4% year-on-year. Less than the previous year, the net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company was PLN 109.1 million, up 11.3 percent year on year. less y/y

Comarch’s operating profitability in 2022 was 8%, net 5.9%.