Monday, February 26, 2024 2:41 p.m.
The chief executive officer behind Rolls-Royce’s remarkable share price recovery has outlined his views on changes at the engineering giant.
Tufan Erzinbilgić, affectionately known as “Turbo Tufan”, emphasized that his meticulous management style and the change in the company’s culture are the keys to success.
He has previously described Rolls as “a platform on fire” that is “grossly mismanaged”.
But shouting at everyone to do better? “Frankly, that’s not my style,” he said in a Times Radio interview. “First of all, we plan everything to ensure sustainable improvements.”
That’s not to say the Elginville hitch isn’t doing its best. “no [other] The CEO actually approved all the deals, I’m currently approving all the deals, and then we looked at major OEM contracts and major airline contracts in similar areas and renegotiated all of them. “Or we decided to move forward with some contracts last year,” he said.
Mr. Erginbirgic’s drastic cost-cutting approach has been well-received by investors, and the company’s stock price has soared more than 250% since he took over.
Profits more than doubled last year, along with record free cash flow, and the company ranks as the best stock on the Stoxx 600 index of Europe’s largest listed companies.
“When you do something like this, it energizes the team,” he said of his decision to go back to the airline and negotiate to recover the £100m of lost debt. “This is no small number. Frankly speaking, 100 million cars that no one knew existed have returned to Rolls-Royce.”
Mr. Erginbilgic’s widely publicized criticism of his previous management team centered on poor financial performance. “Every investment we make destroys value,” he told employees at the time.
In his speech this morning, the new boss emphasized a new shift in thinking.
“Instead of chasing a bunch of numbers called a budget, can we make our business better tomorrow than it is today?”
“And I think you remember a lot of our investors complaining about our numbers. We’re not very clear. Because we’re not very clear internally. We’re definitely running this business differently because we didn’t have that.”
But he refused to be drawn back into bashing past poor performances. “I wish I could say this on a positive note…if you think about what we do, we have a lot of high-quality people. Probably, frankly, we have a lot of high-quality people and deep engineering expertise. It’s not surprising. They’re great.”
“What we’re trying to do is a little bit more proactive culture and performance management. People talk to me about strategic progress rather than a bunch of numbers that don’t mean anything if we hit the numbers.” And I want everyone at Royce Royce to know that I’m here to make a difference.”