Alstom S.A.

Alstom is a French rail systems group headquartered in Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine, formed in 1928 and today the Western world's largest rail manufacturer after absorbing Bombardier Transportation in 2021. The company employs roughly 85,000 people across more than 100 industrial sites, generated approximately €17.6 billion of revenue in FY2024/25 and holds one of the industry's deepest order books at about €92 billion.

Business Overview

Alstom's product architecture covers the entire rail mobility value chain. Its Avelia family of high-speed trains competes at the top of the market, while the Metropolis metro platform and Citadis tram range anchor its urban transit business in over 40 cities worldwide. The Coradia platform serves regional and intercity corridors, and the Prima family addresses freight and passenger locomotives. On the digital side, the company is one of only a handful of global suppliers of ERTMS/ETCS signalling, CBTC urban train control and centralised traffic management software, a division that now contributes a growing share of both revenue and profitability.

The Bombardier Transportation acquisition, completed in January 2021 for roughly €5.5 billion, transformed Alstom from a niche French champion into a diversified global group. The merger added the VLocity and Talent fleets, the MOVIA metro platform, a strong UK and North American installed base, and the BOMBARDIER services network, but it also burdened the group with integration complexity and elevated leverage.

Core Strengths

Alstom's most distinctive asset is its hydrogen leadership. The Coradia iLint, the world's first hydrogen fuel-cell passenger train, entered revenue service in Germany in 2018 and has since completed trials in the Netherlands, Sweden, Poland, Austria and France, making Alstom the reference supplier for zero-emission non-electrified lines. A second-generation high-capacity hydrogen train, the Coradia Stream H, is now in development.

Its signalling division provides a second, higher-margin growth engine. Alstom is one of the top three suppliers of ERTMS onboard and wayside equipment in Europe and a leading CBTC supplier for driverless metros, with recent contract wins in Paris, Riyadh, Sydney and Toronto. The FlexCare full-service maintenance franchise, covering tens of thousands of vehicles, gives the group a stable recurring-revenue base that partially offsets the cyclicality of new-build deliveries.

Challenges & Outlook

The group's principal challenge remains balance-sheet repair. Net debt peaked after the Bombardier integration, prompting a €1 billion rights issue in November 2023 and a deleveraging programme that management aims to complete by fiscal 2026. Working capital swings on large infrastructure packages, together with execution risk on flagship projects such as the UK HS2 trains, keep free cash flow volatile.

Looking ahead, Alstom enters the 2026-2030 period with record backlog, favourable exposure to European rail modernisation, DAC-driven freight digitalisation and hydrogen rollout. If the deleveraging plan stays on track, the group is positioned to convert its scale into steadily improving margins and cash generation.

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