Airbus expects to deliver about 800 planes this year, 65 more than last year, it said on Thursday as it reported an increase in profits and strengthened its position as the world’s largest aircraft-maker.
The European aerospace company said that core profit rose 4 per cent to about €5.8 billion over last year, with revenue rising even more strongly.
The business, which is enjoying an upturn in orders for commercial aircraft as airlines recover from the disruption to travel caused by the pandemic, is projecting profit of up to €7 billion this year, and is due to reward shareholders with a special dividend.
One of the models Airbus will be delivering to buyers this year is the A320neo, a competitor for Boeing’s 737 Max jets — a design that has caused a series of problems for the US manufacturer.
Guillaume Faury, chief executive of Airbus, said the results were “a significant achievement given the complexity of the operating environment”.
It proposed a dividend of €1.80 per share and a special dividend of €1 per share after its cash pile reached €10 billion. Faury said the dividend plan was a reflection of “strong 2023 financials, our growth prospects in 2024 and balance-sheet strength”.
Analysts at Jefferies said “the normal dividend is slightly weaker than expectations” and that the total dividend was “somewhat below the cash we expected would be returned to shareholders in 2024”.
Airbus had net orders of 2,094 commercial aircraft after cancellations, a record, and up from 820 in 2022. This was partly thanks to demand from India and other fast-growing economies.
It has an order backlog of 8,598 commercial aircraft and, like other aircraft-makers, is struggling to keep up with demand. Faury said that the group was trying to “find the sweet spot between demand … and the many bottlenecks we have”, and that its aircraft delivery numbers were subject to there being no fresh supply chain problems.
Boeing delivered 528 commercial aircraft and recorded 1,576 net orders last year.
The American group is struggling in the wake of a mid-air blowout of a door plug on one of its 737 Max aircraft last month. In response, the US Federal Aviation Administration grounded the Max-9 version of the plane for several weeks last month and has capped Boeing’s production of all Max models while it conducts an audit of the manufacturing process.
Faury said the Boeing incident was “another reminder [that] we are in a complex industry where safety is never a given”. He added: “It cannot be quantity over quality. We want to deliver planes that are of high quality and safe.”
Airbus employs about 134,000 people in 180 locations around the world and is the largest aerospace company in Europe. It is the result of industry consolidation, with Airbus Industrie created in 1970 via merger.
It has begun work on a successor for the A320neo, which Faury said would be more fuel efficient and should be ready by the mid to late 2030s. The new plane is expected to burn about 20 per cent less fuel per seat and make greater use of sustainable materials.
Last year, Airbus also enjoyed increases in orders of its helicopter and defence and space units, but its space division was subject to fresh write-downs. In November Airbus took a €300 million charge in its satellite programmes; on Thursday it said this had risen to €600 million.
The problems are related to its OneSat family of commercial telecoms satellites, which face competition from US manufacturers as well as from a new generation of low-cost rivals.
Faury has told colleagues that the performance of the space business was “not acceptable” and is said to have described the situation for the division as an internal “crisis”.
“Put simply, mishaps of this magnitude and suddenness are just not acceptable at Airbus,” Faury wrote in an internal memo seen by Reuters.
Overall Airbus turnover increased 11 per cent year-on-year to €65.4 billion, from €58.8 billion in 2022, with core profit of €6.5 billion to €7 billion predicted for this year. A total of 735 commercial aircraft were delivered, up from 661 in 2022.