The suppliers can't keep up: Airbus would like to complete more aircraft, but can't. "Difficulties in the supply chain" are to blame. The European group is therefore reducing production expectations. Sales and profits plummet.
Bottlenecks at important suppliers thwart Airbus production plans. The world's largest aircraft manufacturer therefore only expects to deliver 700 instead of 720 commercial aircraft this year, as Airbus announced in Toulouse. The expansion of production for the popular medium-haul jets from the A320neo family is also likely to progress more slowly: the number of 65 machines per month will only be reached at the beginning of 2024 and thus half a year later than previously thought, said CEO Guillaume Faury. By the middle of the decade, however, he wants to continue to increase production of the series to 75 jets per month.
"The difficulties in the supply chain are forcing us to adjust the ramp-up process," said Faury. So there are many practically finished aircraft in front of the plants of the DAX group, only the engines were missing. "We are currently building gliders." This shows that the manufacturer could actually produce more machines at the moment, but the suppliers could not keep up.
Most recently, Airbus built around 50 machines from the A320neo family every month. Their engines come either from CFM or from Pratt
The A320neo and especially its long version, the A321neo, are in great demand among airlines. The European Airbus Group is sitting on orders for thousands of machines. In the Corona crisis, many airlines postponed their delivery dates, but canceled comparatively few orders. Now that air traffic is picking up again, especially on short and medium-haul routes, things can't go fast enough for many. The German holiday airline Condor will get some new jets from 2024 from aircraft financiers who have secured early production dates, said Airbus CFO Dominik Asam.
In the second quarter, the consequences of the bottlenecks in Airbus sales were clearly visible: Because the manufacturer delivered fewer aircraft than a year earlier, sales fell by ten percent to 12.8 billion euros. The operating profit adjusted for special effects (adjusted EBIT) fell by 31 percent to almost 1.4 billion euros, also because increased costs for the military transporter A400M also burdened the result. The surplus even collapsed by almost two thirds to 682 million euros.
Since Airbus started the year stronger, the numbers look better for the first six months. The manufacturer delivered 297 commercial aircraft, just as many as a year earlier. Revenue rose 1 percent to 24.8 billion euros, and adjusted operating profit fell just 2 percent to 2.65 billion euros. This is another reason why Airbus boss Faury is sticking to his goal of achieving an adjusted operating profit of around 5.5 billion euros this year.
The fact that Airbus is not allowed to deliver machines to local airlines because of the sanctions against Russia is not as expensive for the group as initially thought. In this way, aircraft could be sold to other customers at higher prices than expected, said CFO Asam. As a result, the booked burden was halved to around 100 million euros.
