2020 not only brought upon us the pandemic but also various challenges, forcing a change in all of us. These changes for us were an opportunity to prove that our continuous improvement policy is a must to keep modifying successfully. Fortunately, when the company quickly shifted towards remote work, our services were not compromised. Our company was presented with difficult decisions, regardless, we proved sustainable, strengthened, and reinvigorated. Maintaining our optimism and confidence will remain part of our plan for the new year. As we have completed 2020, we look forward to 2021 with great conviction and flexibility to the changes that we may face. We will surely optimize our efficiency and we are convinced that the investment in technology we already adopted and a quick reaction to introduce or enhance services to the market will help to show uninterrupted growth in the digital era. I am profoundly grateful for the loyalty and commitment that my team has shown me through this unpredictable 2020. My deep respect goes to my employees who, even though they have had personal struggles, persisted to adjust to this so-called new normal. The pandemic has become part of our lives, and we will persevere in our critical work.

As the pandemic evolves, we continue to learn more about ourselves. We have been working for years to maintain a good balance between our translation, interpreting, and intellectual property businesses; between public and private splits; or even within our specialization development in various sectors. This diversification and healthy balance of turnover, together with a close monitoring of market trends, combined with a slow but sure strategic plan for the development of new services or sectors, are in my opinion the keys that have allowed us to successfully face these times of crisis. To this most strategic part of the business must be added a quick reaction capacity and flexibility to adapt the teams to the market needs or to accelerate planned activities if the moment requires so. During this kind of challenge is when you test and see the results of your team building activities and internal communications efforts. I’m extremely proud of the loyalty and commitment shown by our different teams and the respect all have proved when interacting with other business units or functional areas.

As the pandemic continues hitting the world, we maintain a very flexible approach to the way we run the business. Though we already had a hybrid on-site/remote working scenario in place for most of the workforce, the sixth wave of COVID-19 has demanded a step back into full-time remote work for some team members.

2020 was a great learning experience in terms of remote environments. And 2021 firmly established this environment and made it more efficient. So, we are happy to see that our operations are properly working, the service we provide to our customers around the world has not been affected, as well as the business per se. The recipe in our case is being agile in adapting to changing situations, always backed up by our amazing team. Keeping the company culture, employee loyalty, and team spirit strong is a must, especially in these remote scenarios.

Despite the fact that this late new wave might have undermined some sectors, I am quite optimistic that we are at the beginning of the end of the pandemic and convinced that we will face a new era that will combine the best from the pre-pandemic, such as teamwork, fellowship, or the comradery that being in the same room provides along with the learnings we found from remote working in terms of efficiency, flexibility, and team adaptation to new environments.

The return of in-person events in all sectors and the increase in international air traffic are the most reliable signs that we are in the middle of a new post-pandemic normality. Are we back to doing business as before? Well, largely yes, but with a few adjustments to how we go about it. On the operational level, there is no doubt we are continuing to work with remote scenarios with teams that are ever more international and dispersed. This enables us to attract the best talent wherever it may be. On the other hand, although adjustments are being made to in-person and remote working days, in general all workforces are combining both ways of working and facilitating labor flexibility in the process. In our case, during the first half of this year we were especially active, and not only in the business sense. We have announced the 100% acquisition of tsd Technik-Sprachendienst GmbH as part of our international expansion and technological development plan and launched a new corporate identity that seeks to visually reflect the company's recent transformation and leadership and we believe will project a more modern, flexible, and technological image of SeproTec that is in line with the company’s new strategic proposal. The new SeproTec for the new times that are coming.

The world is changing faster than ever before. With rapidly changing demographics, an unprecedented global network with billions of people hyper-connected to each other and amazing technology advances in the pipeline, we can expect a huge transformation in our society in the next decade. Apart from the predictable changes within our sector deriving from migratory flows, the technological revolution will undoubtedly shape the future of LSPs in the coming years, not only due to the innovations adopted by consumers and therefore by the scope of services we provide to clients, but also in the way in which we integrate technology into our processes. Vendors will have to adapt their services with the eruption of new technologies, but they will continue to be important within the value chain. The translation market is undergoing significant changes, increasingly as a result of the evolution of technology. As Machine Translation, AI, and Speech Translation evolve and grow in volume, we will see new tech firms vying to break into the language space and altering the competitive landscape. It is up to those of us in the translation services industry to take command of this disruptive situation and lead the change, providing our know-how to the industry.