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Airbus said it plans to deliver more planes in 2024, cementing its lead over arch-rival Boeing even as the European plane maker cautioned of persistent supply chain challenges.
Airbus chief executive Guillaume Faury said the European aerospace and defence group was trying to balance resurgent demand from airlines with a supply chain that was a “world of bottlenecks” with a “lot of complexity”.
Airbus, he told reporters in Toulouse, was “trying to find the sweetspot between the demand we have and the many bottlenecks we have”.
The world’s biggest plane maker said it would pay a special dividend to shareholders after net cash exceeded €10bn in 2023. It expects to deliver about 800 commercial aircraft to customers this year — 65 more than in 2023. The company reaffirmed plans to build 75 of its best-selling A320 family of jets a month in 2026.
Airbus is boosting output just as Boeing struggles to contain the fallout from the mid-air fuselage blowout on one of its 737 Max aircraft operated by Alaska Airlines last month. The US aviation safety regulator has stopped Boeing from increasing output of its 737 Max planes while it continues to probe the company’s manufacturing processes.
Faury said the incident was “another reminder [that] we are in a complex industry where quality safety is never a given”.
“It cannot be quantity over quality,” he told reporters. “We want to deliver a number of planes which are of high quality and safe.”
Production lines across the industry have been strained coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic and as global airlines have gone on an unprecedented ordering spree. Problems at engine makers have compounded the challenges.
Faury stressed the company was currently focused on meeting its planned output increase to 75 A320 jets a month in 2026 and was not considering further rises at this point.
The group’s operating profit rose 4 per cent to €5.8bn last year, while revenues climbed 11 per cent to €65.4bn.
However, it offered muted financial guidance for the coming year with adjusted free cash flow expected to come in at €4bn, down from €4.4bn in 2023, sending its shares down in early trading on Thursday. Its shares were trading at about €149, down 1 per cent, in the early afternoon.
While its commercial aircraft business enjoyed a strong year, Airbus disclosed that its defence and space business was hit by charges totalling €600mn. Profits at the division fell 40 per cent to €229mn.
Faury told the Financial Times last year he was not satisfied with the performance of the space business, which has been hit by development delays and faces strong competition from US companies such as SpaceX.
Separately, French engine maker Safran on Thursday echoed Faury’s comments on the supply chain pressures. The company said it was still facing shortages on materials like titanium and other metals and hiring issues in the US, and expected the issues to persist this year.
But chief executive Olivier Andriès said that the company was in a good position to keep up with the requests from Airbus to increase the pace of engine deliveries.
“We are putting ourselves in a position to meet the needs of Airbus and Boeing in 2024, and we are currently discussing their needs in 2025,” he said on French television channel BFM Business. “We will of course respond, and we will indeed follow this increase in pace.”
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