2010 ended on a positive note, with a market growth of over 30% in volume compared to the low level in 2009. This recovery, which could be qualified as "technique", is not equally distributed throughout the world. It was mainly driven last year by the United States, Brazil and Australia, Europe contributing only marginally to the market rebound. For a sustained growth, it is essential that it affects all major developed countries in the world. 

Encouraging signs have been seen in the final quarter, customers have begun to reinvest. There was a small rebound in the first half of 2010, and the second half was marked by a significant rise in business, with sales up 34% in the fourth quarter. The growth of our revenue by 24% over the full year, driven by higher equipment sales at 34%, resulted in a significant decrease in machine inventory. However service activity continued to be impacted by the low utilisation rte of aerial work platforms in rental customers fleets.   

Staffing levels, which were adjusted in 2009, remained stable in 2010, thanks to partial unemployment and other actions which not destroy sustainable jobs, pending a real recovery and maintaining the production equipment to enable us to be ready for the inevitable market rebond. The Group's strategy in 2010 was to preserve its commercial network in the world so that we could continue supporting our customers despiste the crisis. This was very demanding because of the force of the crisis which has hit us. We maintained R&D budgets and continued to design new products. We are preparing for the future and we are ready to react when the economy recovers. 

For 2011, our main objective is to restore the Group's profitability by continuing to grow. In 2010, we reduced our losses by 24% but this still leaves us too far from the breakeven.

2011 started off on the right track with a high level of backlog. The return of market growth across all regions, particularly in Europe, leads us to expect a growth in our activity similar to that in 2010, which will allow us to return to operational balance profitability and to bring back the working capital to a normative level. We will significantly increase our production level, reduce the cost of under-activity in factories and pursue the globalization of our organization.

Large countries like India, china or Russia are still to be converted to aerial work platforms. Markets in Europe and the United-States should gradually return to a more satisfactory level. There are many growth opportunities and we have the people, products and organization to fully benefit from these opportunities in the next few years.