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Airbus made record profits last year and restored its dividend, as the European aerospace group struck an optimistic note about prospects for a sustained rebound in the aviation industry.
The Toulouse-based company also raised its delivery forecast for the coming year, saying it was expected to dispatch 720 commercial aircraft, up from the 611 it handed over to customers in 2021.
The bullish outlook came after it reported record net profit of € 4.2bn, driven by a rise in sales of commercial aircraft and higher earnings in its defense and helicopter divisions. The result was boosted by a series of adjustments, including halting its A380 superjumbo program.
As a result, Airbus said it would propose a dividend of € 1.50 a share, its first payout to shareholders in two years. The last annual dividend of € 1.65 was in 2019.
The group’s adjusted operating profit, a figure tracked by analysts, soared to € 4.86bn from € 1.7bn a year earlier. Revenues rose 4 per cent to € 52.1bn, mainly reflecting a higher number of commercial aircraft deliveries.
“2021 was a year of transition, where our attention shifted from navigating the pandemic towards recovery and growth,” said Guillaume Faury, Airbus chief executive.
“Record net income and our efforts to strengthen the net cash position underpin our proposal to reintroduce dividend payments going forward,” he added.
Despite the strong rebound, Faury cautioned the “pandemic is not yet behind us”.
Company executives are still seeing tensions on “supply, logistics and labor”, Faury told analyzes on a call, although he reiterated he expected the market to fully recover between 2023 and 2025.
Airbus also stuck to its targets to increase production of its popular single-aisle A320 family to 65 jets a month by the summer of 2023.
The aircraft maker faces a difficult balancing act trying to rally suppliers that have been battered by the pandemic to increase production, while at the same time meeting recovering demand from customers.
A shortage of workers and key materials such as computer chips have fueled concerns over whether the supply chain is able to meet some of Airbus’s more aggressive plans for narrow-body production beyond 2023. The company previously said it was looking at scenarios of 70 jets a month by the first quarter of 2024 and 75 a month by 2025.
Domhnal Slattery, chief executive of Avolon, the leasing company, said both Airbus and Boeing were “alive” to issues surrounding the industry’s supply chain, but cautioned it was “creaking operationally and in some instances financially”.
“It’s critical they don’t put too much pressure on the supply chain, so it doesn’t break,” Slattery told the Financial Times in an interview this week.
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