Blog Holding companies are once again operating in limited mode, restarting their production lines with renewed efficiency and resilience.

The engineering holding MOTOR JIKOV has concluded a two-week shutdown caused by the effects of the coronavirus and resumed production on April 20th. Currently, production operates at approximately 50 percent, while the remaining employees continue working from home at 70 percent of their salary, utilizing the quality of work scheme. The company's profit for the first half of the year is expected to decrease by roughly 30 million CZK compared to the plan. The holding's main customer, Scania, restarted production on April 20th, but only at 20 percent capacity.

In March, the holding dismissed 60 agency workers and another 20 employees who were in their trial period. To date, it has had 800 permanent employees and about 90 agency workers. Further layoffs are not currently planned. Over 60 percent of its turnover comes from orders for the automotive industry.

"Our decision is that from Monday, all operations will run at fifty percent capacity. The rest of the staff will work through the quality of work scheme. For May, we plan to operate at up to 70 percent, but these are all estimates. Companies have only now begun to reduce their capacities more — when they went into shutdown, their orders didn't change much, as they wanted to stock up," said Dvořák. Customer demand started to decline at the end of April, and there are fewer orders for May.

MOTOR JIKOV GROUP had revenues of 1.8 billion CZK in 2018 and an EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) of 88 million. Its largest customer is the Swedish manufacturer of trucks, buses, and marine engines, Scania. Over 80 percent of its production is exported, primarily to Sweden and the USA.