Jaroslav Strnad’s business is entering a new era. Record growth and an investment fund for accredited investors

Last year was a landmark year for the industrial groups owned by Czech entrepreneur Jaroslav Strnad – CE Industries and Helicopter Alliance. They started this year with an EBITDA of over 1.7 billion crowns and year-on-year growth of 53 per cent. The next step is now underway: the CE Industries & Aerospace SICAV qualified investor fund. “We don’t want to look for money and only then think about what to buy,” explains Adam Šotek, Vice-Chairman of the Board and CEO of CE Industries, adding that they are approaching investors in order to further boost the companies’ growth.

According to the results, 2025 was an exceptional year for the group. Was that the main impetus for setting up the fund?

It was one of the reasons, but not the only one. For the first time in its history, the CE Industries group exceeded a consolidated EBITDA of one billion crowns. With Helicopter Alliance, we’re at 1.7 billion. And we managed the tolling (contract manufacturing – ed.) for Liberty Ostrava – a project that generated eight billion in revenue last year. Yet the company had been at a standstill for thirteen months, the market was in recession, and no one expected operations to restart. We managed it. Together with growth across the sectors in which we operate, this has shown us where we belong as a group and where we want to move next.

The CE Industries Group was established in 2020. How has your acquisition strategy changed over the past five years?

We started with distressed projects and start-ups. In 2019, the combined EBITDA of the companies we acquired was a negative 865 million crowns. Now, five years later, we’re at 1.2 billion crowns, and I must point out that we operate in sectors that are by no means easy. Today, we no longer focus primarily on rescuing companies from bankruptcy. We now want to use the industrial and technological base we have built up to carry out much larger acquisitions, specifically in companies with strong results in Europe and elsewhere in the world.

So is the creation of the fund driven by a desire for further development and growth?
Exactly. We do not need funds from investors for the operation or development of existing companies. Our debt levels and the group’s financial health provide scope for senior financing. In 2026, we plan to grow EBITDA by 35 per cent, even without the impact of the new fund. Within three years, we aim to double our EBITDA results. We have created a high-quality platform and now we want to significantly accelerate our growth. We are targeting larger and more significant acquisition opportunities than we have pursued so far. That is why we specifically sought a format that we could transparently open up to external investors. We want to share our future growth with them, and investors will help us significantly accelerate this process and make larger investments with their funds. The fund is primarily intended to assist with the development of new projects and the exploitation of new opportunities. At the same time, it provides a stable foundation for their long-term growth.

What will the fund’s parameters be, and how much money do you aim to raise?
We will publish the fund’s prospectus in May. We would then like to secure the first funds during the summer months, whilst the actual implementation of new acquisitions will take roughly nine months to a year. The figure of €100 million has already been mentioned in the media, but personally, I would expect it to be somewhere between €100 and €200 million over the first twelve months. However, I would like to emphasise that the fund is intended exclusively for qualified investors, not for retail investors.

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