In January, Pentalog signed one of these large contracts of which it has the secret and at the same time Pentalog Techno signed another one not bad either… and then both us and our friends felt the opportunities drying up a bit. We have started up with only 2 new customers in the last 3 months, instead of the usual rate of 2 customers per month.
But for a few weeks now, we have started to receive new requests. Yesterday I was in Geneva for a very interesting project. I have just responded to a start up on the phone. Monday, I met a very nice grow up business, which is very similar to Pentalog in respect to culture and philosophy. Pentalog Techno is working on 3 prospects, including a highly prestigious one. Finally, we have identified a very consistent new source of projects at one of our existing customers. In short, in a few days, we have identified close to EUR 4 million.
Before yesterday, Jean-Paul asked me what the impact of the crisis was for Pentalog. I believe we must continuously update the crisis project management. For now, we’ve had about 9 or 10 people over 300, who have lost their work assignment because of the crisis. On the other hand, we have created approximately 50 new positions for new projects. Therefore, the impact for the group is zero so far. Will there be a windfall effect for low costers tomorrow? Maybe. The crisis, despite the current spring-like quivering will be long, very long. The players will set up new strategies to reduce costs in order to continue to live and develop in a more complex sustainable economic framework. But it will take a few months to get there. I will return to this topic to tell you if it was confirmed or not. I think this might make more sense on the markets that are still slightly open to offshore/nearshore, such as France and Germany.
At this stage, what pleases me is to see that our growth remains very strong in Q1 and Q2 (+55% in Q1) and especially that new opportunities are emerging. I believe that for Western IT, due to long contracts, the tension will be slightly felt in Q3 2009, even more in Q4, to reach its high point in Q1 or even Q2 2010… It’s within this schedule that new offshoring opportunities may emerge.





















