(Boursier.com) — Airbus drops 1.8% to 128 euros after its quarterly point. The aeronautics giant confirmed its financial and delivery targets for 2023, while posting increased accounts in the third quarter. Over the period, the group recorded an adjusted operating profit of 1.013 billion euros, up 21%, for a turnover up 12% to 14.897 billion euros. Results nevertheless a little short compared to market expectations.
Production of the Airbus A320 family, Airbus’ main profitability driver, is “progressing well” towards the previously announced target of 75 aircraft per month in 2026, Airbus said. The aircraft manufacturer has also indicated that it wants to return to ‘pre-Covid’ levels of 10 A350 aircraft per month in 2026, compared to a previous objective of nine per month by the end of 2025. “By definition, by nature, 2024 production will be significantly higher than that of 2023, and we will be more precise at the beginning of next year”, declared the general director, Guillaume Faury, during the presentation conference.
Airbus also reaffirmed its intention to restructure its Defense and Space division, where it recorded new charges of 300 ME on “certain satellite development programs”, without giving further details. These charges are in addition to the 100 ME recorded earlier in the year. Risks remain on costs, reliability and production volumes of the A400M military carrier, Airbus said, while some countries are said to be reluctant about the scale of their initial orders.
Despite everything, Airbus is still targeting the delivery of 720 commercial aircraft in 2023; an adjusted EBIT of €6 billion; and Free Cash Flow before mergers and acquisitions and customer financing of €3 billion.
RBC (‘sector performance’) calls it a ‘relatively clean’ quarter and expected the stock to respond well due to supply chain concerns, risk of greater disruption from GTF drivers and to market uncertainty before the publication of results. Jefferies (‘buy’) describes a ‘soft’ third quarter, although with “several positive points”. The broker notably retained the guidance despite an exceptional charge linked to satellite development programs which put pressure on the outlook. Morgan Stanley (‘overweight’) notes that Ebit fell short of consensus due to the burden on satellite development programs in defense and space. However, forecasts for the financial year and ramp-up targets have been confirmed, with the A350 production rate target revised slightly upwards.
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