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Airbus CEO says outlook has deteriorated
October 30th 2020
Airbus CEO, Guillaume Faury, said this week there was much uncertainty in the global aviation market as the coronavirus continued to circulate around the world. Read More »
While there were signs of a pickup in air travel at the end of June, Faury said the recovery over the northern hemisphere summer had been "slower than anticipated and hoped".
"Travel restrictions remain in place in most regions worldwide and airlines are facing a difficult situation," Faury said at the mid-week Airbus financial results presentation. “The outlook for global air travel recovery has deteriorated, indicating the crisis is far from over. In this context, we remain prudent and humble."
The company expected demand would return to pre-COVID-19 levels between 2023 and 2025.
Airbus reported a net loss of 767 million euros (US$896 million) for the three months to September 30, 2020, down from a net profit of 983 million euros in the 2019 corresponding quarter. Revenue fell 27%, to 11.2 billion euros, due to fewer aircraft deliveries and lower revenue at the company's defence and space business, Airbus said.
The company's commercial aircraft business posted earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) loss of 591 million euros for the quarter, compared with positive EBIT of 1.2 billion euros a year ago.
Airbus delivered 341 commercial aircraft in the first nine months of calendar 2020, down 40% from 571 in the same months last year. Faury said Airbus planned to maintain A320 family production at 40 aircraft a month in the first half of calendar 2021, before gradually increasing the rate to 47 a month in the third quarter of the year.
Previously, Airbus had planned to begin the progressive ramp up of A320 family production during the second quarter. It was "not such a big change", he said, and added it was a dynamic situation and could still evolve.
"What we believe is firstly the rate of 40 is robust and the way we manage, for the moment, is by moving that point, the point of ramp up, from rate 40 to a higher rate," Faury said.
"Obviously, with a degradation of the outlook traffic, it has moved to the right, therefore going from the beginning of Q2 to the beginning of Q3. "It reflects the situation today as good as we can see."
There was no change to the A330 production rate of two aircraft a month and the A350 production rate of "around five" a month, Faury said.
