Wed, Mar 20th 2024
Olma Messen St. Gallen AG celebrates a notable operating profit amidst financial challenges, and gearing up for expansion.
Olma Messen St. Gallen AG achieved an operating profit of CHF 2.4 million in 2023. However, after deducting depreciation and amortization, taxes and interest, a loss of 1.4 million francs resulted.
Around nine million francs of the targeted 20 million francs in share capital are still missing.
Raising the share capital is taking longer than originally thought, Christine Bolt told the Keystone-SDA news agency. A further six million francs are to come from the economy and three million francs from the population.
When asked, those responsible for Olma also spoke about the future of hall nine. The Federal Roads Office is planning to build a third tube in order to renovate the existing tubes of the Rosenberg Tunnel as part of the city highway and to eliminate bottlenecks.
Hall nine will also be affected by the construction work. There are many possible scenarios: one of which being, the hall could be placed on stilts during the construction of the additional tube.
“Astra will indemnify Olma financially for all expenses incurred by Olma Messen in connection with the third tube,” explained Christine Bolt. This also includes the possible construction of a new hall.
Hall nine is indispensable for Olma Messen, emphasised Bolt. The layout of the hall is specifically designed for the congress business. On the other hand, demolition would also result in the loss of exhibition and exhibitor space, which is used during the Olma in the fall, for example.
Olma Messen has run into financial difficulties in recent years: Cancellations of trade fairs, conferences and events due to the Covid-19 pandemic had an impact on liquidity.
Added to this was inflation, which increased the cost of building the new hall by an additional CHF 10 million.
The Olma trade fairs needed support: the city and canton initially granted loans of 8.4 million Swiss francs each, which were then waived with a second aid package.
As a further consequence, the Olma management decided to convert the cooperative into a public limited company with a share capital of 20 million francs.
©Keystone/SDA
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