ESG-Oriented Business Model

Adb Group is committed to the promotion and development of services and investments associated with the dimensions of sustainability to create long-term value for its stakeholders by directly contributing to the socio-economic development of the area while respecting the people and protecting the environment.

Airports, as strategic infrastructures, play a fundamental role in boosting and socio-economic development not only for the local area but for the entire economic and social growth and competitiveness.

Using the "Economic Impact Online Calculator" model prepared by ACI Europe, based on traffic data as the main driver, it is possible to theoretically estimate the growth and employment produced by airports, according to this classification:

• direct impact is that generated by the companies operating directly from the airport, whether based on the grounds or nearby;
• indirect impact relates to the providers of goods, services and support for airport activity (such as food and beverages for catering, aircraft fuel, etc.);
• spin-off impact is that generated by the employees of companies associated with airport activity, who spend money for their daily needs, in turn contributing to creating jobs in the relevant sectors;
• the catalytic impact refers to the way in which the presence of the airport facilitates the development of business and projects in other sectors of the economy.

Based on this methodology, the four types of impact of Bologna airport in the three-year period 2020-2022 in terms of job creation were:

 

*The catalytic impact for 2020 and 2021 has not been assessed due to the difficulties of predicting an unusual occurrence such as a pandemic.
** Theoretical calculations do not correspond to actual employment figures as the effects of the pandemic are temporarily mitigated by the presence of measures such as the lay-off scheme and the blocking of redundancies

In addition to job creation, in 2022 the AdB Group generated economic value of €146.7 million and distributed economic value of €97 million.

In 2022, the economic value distributed by the Group was redistributed to the various stakeholders of the Group in the following percentages:

 

while no value was distributed to shareholders due to the ongoing pandemic and to safeguard the Group's liquidity.

Finally, in 2022 Adb Group invested for approximately Euro 20 million mainly in infrastructural developments and cyclical maintenance of plants and buildings.

In doing all this, AdB Group’s daily commitment is to pay increasing attention to the dimensions of sustainability in its environmental, social and governance components.

Specifically, Adb is active, also through participation in panels and working groups at local and European level, on issues related to EU Taxonomy (EU Reg. 852/2020), with the aim of accompanying the growth with actions to mitigate negative impacts on the environment and, in particular, on the climate.

The EU Taxonomy is a classification system that helps companies and investors to identify environmentally sustainable (for now only environmental) economic activities to make sustainable investment decisions.

Environmentally sustainable economic activities are described as those that make a substantial contribution to at least one of the EU's climate and environmental objectives (climate change mitigation, climate change adaptation, sustainable use and protection of water and marine resources, transition to a circular economy, pollution prevention and control and protection and restoration of biodiversity and ecosystems) while at the same time not significantly harming any of these objectives (principle of the DNSH – Do No Significant Harm) and meeting social minimum safeguards .”

Even if the EU Taxonomy does not establish mandatory requirements on environmental performance for investments and company activities, AdB Group believes that it is an important guideline for strategically orienting investment decisions as it encourages the transition towards sustainability aiming to increase investments in projects and activities to achieve the objectives of the European Green Deal.

As early as 2021, AdB has structured an internal working group to better understand and analyse the requirements of the regulation, so as to be able to engage a dialogue with other airports and begin preparations for calculating the KPIs. During 2022, the working group continued to prepare the disclosure required for publication in the next Financial Statements by legislation. Additionally, the AdB Group is collaborating with ACI Europe Green Finance Taskforce, a working group dedicated to sharing with the European Commission the necessary developments to be made to the Taxonomy Regulation, to ensure its correct applicability to airport sector. Furthermore, AdB Group intends to perform a physical climate risk assessment in 2023 as required by the DNSH criteria for adapting to climate change and a Human Rights Due Diligence activity under the OECD guidelines and UNGPs principles, as required by the Social Minimum Safeguards, which will allow progress in the work of identifying activities and quantifying KPIs.

In the meantime, the legislation is rapidly evolving: in April 2023, the EU published for consultation the draft of the delegated acts relating to the other four environmental objectives (briefly biodiversity, circular economy, pollution and water) in addition to the amendments on the first two delegated acts relating to climate change (mitigation and adaptation).