By Bjorn Fehrm
February 20, 2025, © Leeham News in Toulouse: The headline shows the words of Airbus CEO Guillame Faury when he opened the presentation of Airbus 2024 results in Toulouse today. It was a session where Faury and the CFO Thomas Toepfer put in an effort to let all present international journalists and their online colleagues ask all questions and deliver honest answers.
On the business-as-usual side, the company delivered 766 aircraft, which was within the guidance, after a deep grab effort in 4Q, leading to a dart of deliveries for 1Q2025. EBIT at €5.4bn and Free Cash Flow at €4.5bn were also within guidance.
In general, the Commercial airplane side was fighting specific supply problems during 2024, which might limit the ramp-up of A350s and A220s going forward, more of which below. Helicopters have now recovered from challenging times and delivered a solid result. Defense and Space are strong in Air Power (fighters, etc.), given the tense European situation, with Space going through restructuring, which might include mergers with other European space players.
The real news was the reasons for pausing the Airbus eVTOL program, according to Faury, “not only because batteries were not where they should have been but also due to the lack of a market for this type of transportation.” As the world’s largest supplier of helicopters, Airbus is a credible source for such a lack of market statement.
Faury also detailed what is happening on the Hydrogen side. Due to slower-than-expected progress in Green Hydrogen production build-up, deployment of preparatory Ground Support Equipment (GSE), and Transportation using hydrogen at the airports in their H2 partner network, Airbus has decided to push out the entry into service of a “commercially viable hydrogen aircraft” by five to ten years.
However, said Faury, it has made progress. “We have reached TRL 3 for the tecnobricks, which has enabled us to select the Fuel Cell path as the preferred way forward. This means these activities are continued at the present level or even intensified, but it also means other paths (read Hydrogen burn) are ramped down. Overall, it means a decrease in R&D spending for Hydrogen activities in the coming years.”
Group-level results
Revenue for 2024 was €69.2bn (€65.4bn 2023), and EBIT Adjusted (mapping operational achievements) was €5.3bn (€5.8bn 2023). This includes a €1.3bn charge for the Space side.
The free cash flow for 2024 was €4.3bn, the same as for 2023. The net cash position at the end of 2024 was €11.8bn, with total liquidity at €35bn, Figure 1.
Figure 1. Airbus’ cash position by the end of 2024. Source: Airbus.
Guidance for 2025 was:
- Airbus targets 820 commercial aircraft deliveries.
- Airbus expects an EBIT Adjusted of €7.0bn.
- Free Cash Flow of €4.5bn.
Commercial aircraft
Market demand continues to be strong, with net orders of 826 aircraft (2023 2094) and a backlog of 8,658 aircraft.
Of the 766 (735) delivered aircraft, 602 were A321/A320 (whereof 2/3rds A321), 75 A220, 57 A350, and 32 A330.
The monthly delivery rate for the A320 family is now targeted at 75 by 2027. The first half of 2025 deliveries will be impacted by CFM’s problems with depleting its delivery capacity to help Airbus with 4Q deliveries and a component factory in Flordia being hit by an autumn hurricane, making LEAP deliveries only catch up to rate by mid-year.
The ramp-up in rate of the A350 is threatened by the problems at Spirit Aerosystrems (who has agreed to a bailout from bankruptcy by a Boeing takeover concurrent with a carveout of Airbus activities), presently limiting the A350 rate to 6/month by throttling deliveries of Section 15 at that rate.
Airbus counts on closing the carveout of its activities at Spirit by summer, after which it will invest in the carveout to increase the rate. In total, the investments and agreed carveout compensations will be natural for 2025 with negative influences on EBIT and FCF for 2026 and 2027 in the order of 100s of millions of dollars. Airbus maintains a target of 12 A350 deliveries per month by 2028.
The A220 is also affected by the Spirit problems as the main carbon wingbox is manufactured by Spirit in Belfast. The issues there are similar, with the wingbox deliveries presently slowing the ramp of the A220. The target delivery rate of the A220 is maintained at 14 per month by next year. Given the present rate of about six per month and the problems in Belfast, this is not realistic.
The A330neo is now the problem-free line at a steady rate of four per month.
Helicopters
The Airbus helicopter had a good 2024, with deliveries of 450 helicopters versus 393 in 2023. Revenue increased by 8.2% to €7.9bn (€7.3bn), and EBIT by 10% to €0.8bn (€0.7bn).
Defense and Space
Defense and Space had a good year for Air Power (defense fighters), whereas the Space segment is going through a restructuring, including discussions with Thales and Leonardo of a merger to increase scale. Division revenues increased by 5% to €12.1bn (€11.5bn). EBIT was negative because of the €1.3bn charges for Space at €0.7bn (€0.2bn). Seven A440M were delivered in 2024.
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