Paris (AFP) – European aerospace group Airbus posted an 85-percent rise in first-half profit Wednesday to $1.7 billion, even though it delivered fewer commercial planes compared with the same period last year. Citing “persistent engine supply issues” for its popular A320 jets, Airbus said 306 planes had been delivered overall in the first half, down from 323 in the first half of 2024.
It said it secured net orders for 402 aircraft in the first half, up from 310 in the same period last year, helping to push revenues up three percent to 29.6 billion euros. The jump in profits to 1.5 billion euros came a year after Airbus reported a 46-percent slump in earnings for the first half of 2024. Operating profit, which analysts often consider a better gauge of underlying business performance, rose 11 percent to 1.6 billion euros.
Looking ahead, Airbus said its targets did not exclude the potential impact from the US tariffs being imposed by President Donald Trump, and it still expected to deliver 820 commercial aircraft this year. “On tariffs, the recent political agreement between the EU and the US to revert to a zero-tariff approach for civil aircraft is a welcome development for our industry,” chief executive Guillaume Faury said in a statement.
At the end of last month, 60 planes were still waiting to receive their engines from CFM, a joint venture between the Safran and GE groups, as well as Pratt & Whitney engines, Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury said in a press conference call. “In terms of aircraft production and availability, with the exception of the engines for these aircraft, we are actually much further ahead than 306 aircraft at the current stage,” said Faury, expressing confidence in meeting the 820 delivery forecast. “We have a credible second-half plan,” he added, recalling that in 2018, Airbus delivered 303 planes in the first half but hit 800 for the year as a whole.
Airbus’s director of commercial aircraft, Christian Scherer, said in June that other aircraft, particularly the wide-body A350, were suffering a backlog due to a toilet shortage. “You can’t really build an airplane without a toilet,” he quipped ahead of the Paris Air Show, highlighting the fragile state of the sector’s supply chain, where a small bottleneck can put at risk ambitious commercial programmes.
A year ago, Airbus’s half-year net profit plummeted 46 percent due to expenses related to space activities. Responding to a drop in demand for telecommunications satellites, which hit its financial performance, Airbus in October announced 2,500 job cuts in its defence and space division, a figure it revised downwards in December to 2,043.
The company’s forecast for 2025 remained unchanged as it said it was targeting adjusted operating profit “of approximately 7 billion euros.” Airbus said it had already felt the “impact” of 10-percent tariffs in effect since April and was “reassured, but cautious” after the agreement announced Sunday between the United States and the European Union reestablishing a zero-tariff regime for aeronautics.
Asked whether President Donald Trump’s support for Boeing, its main competitor, could disadvantage Airbus, Faury said: “Knowing that Boeing benefits from this extremely powerful political support, it forces us to be even better.” The US behemoth, which has suffered several crises, is now “in a stabilisation phase”, according to its CEO, Kelly Ortberg, and reported better-than-expected results on Tuesday.
© 2024 AFP
