Airbus sees higher deliveries, cautions on output for A320

Bloomberg

Airbus SE projected higher deliveries for this year and will accelerate output of its largest models as long-haul travel rebounds, while scaling back production of its bestselling A320 family with supply-chain disruptions continuing to ripple through the industry.
For 2023, the planemaker plans to hand over 720 aircraft, in line with its original 2022 projection, which ended up coming in short, at 661 planes. For the monthly output of its A320-family model, Airbus wants to build 65 units by the end of 2024 compared with about 50 this year, and go to 75 in 2026. Both goals are a year later than Airbus’s previous projections.
“This is a very disruptive environment, coming from different sources, that’s making us inefficient,” Airbus Chief Executive Officer Guillaume Faury said on a call with analysts to discuss full-year earnings. “When will we be back to 2018 levels of productivity, I don’t know.”
Airbus is moving ahead more carefully on narrow-bodies after the company missed an already-reduced delivery target last year.
Faury has cautioned that supply constraints will continue to plague the industry at least for the rest of this year, and he called the delivery shortfall last year “quite frustrating.”
The planemaker expects adjusted earnings before interest and tax of €6 billion ($6.4 billion) this year, compared with €5.6 billion in 2022. Free cash flow before some items will drop to €3 billion, Airbus predicted, from €4.7 billion.
Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg estimated adjusted operating profit of €5.4 billion for last year.
Last year’s cash-flow haul was helped in part by favourable exchange rates, Airbus said.
The company, which named Thomas Toepfer as new chief financial officer yesterday, proposed paying a dividend of €1.80 for 2022.
It also booked a charge of €477 million related to its A400M military transport aircraft, a program that’s struggled to achieve its commercial and technical targets for years.
Airbus A350 and A330 passenger aircraft.
Toepfer joins from German specialty-chemicals company Covestro later this year and will succeed Dominik Asam, who has announced his switch to German software company
SAP SE after four years at the company.
Airbus got off to a slow start this year, handing over just 20 commercial aircraft in January.