30 Years Since the First Session on the WSE
How has the IPO on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE) affected the development of Asseco, how has the company managed to expand its business on international markets, and what has made the company achieve such good financial results in the difficult year of the pandemic - all this was discussed by Rafał Kozłowski, President of the Management Board of Asseco Enterprise Solutions, during the festive celebration of the 30th anniversary of the inaugural session on the WSE. The first session on the WSE took place on April 16, 1991.
We are also thirty years old, as our beginnings date back to the early 1990s. In 2004 we went public and it was a turning point in the development of Asseco, as the capital market enables us to accept a completely different level of risk. The contribution of the capital market and the Warsaw Stock Exchange itself, which organizes trading, cannot be overestimated. Thanks to the money from the stock market we have managed to go beyond the borders of Poland; we bought our first company in Slovakia, and that was the beginning of Asseco. Later on, several listed companies joined our group, we entered the public market with sector or regional leaders. Apart from motivation of managers who ran these ventures, an important element that helped us think about the future, strategy, and long-term financing was the stock exchange.
Being present on the stock exchange is one of the reasons for Asseco's success on international markets.
At present we are able to compete on the international market in virtually any IT segment. The history of Asseco proves that it can be done through everyday work on small or large projects, and such approach ultimately always brings value. While developing this business, we believed that although there was not much capital on the Polish market, there was enough entrepreneurial thinking. Our federation model, i.e. integration of entrepreneurs who have product ambitions and want to produce software for clients, brings results. We have been operating in this way for 30 years and we will continue to do so.
The pandemic has affected all areas of our life. The participants of the event discussed how it affected the operations of individual listed companies, including Asseco.
It has been an interesting period of great uncertainty for us since last March. It became clear very quickly that there was one key word that helped both us and our customers, and that was digitization. Digitization is a way for companies to whom we sell our software to reach customers better and faster. The increased demand for this type of service is what made us able to perform so well financially last year. Digitization has also allowed us to provide work remotely, allowing 95 percent of our employees to stay at home.