Airbus Se Unsp/Adr

Thank you, Sharon, and good evening, ladies and gentlemen. This is the Airbus Q1 2024 results release conference call. Guillaume Faury, our CEO, and Thomas Topfer, our CFO, will be presenting our results and answering your questions. This call is planned to last around an hour. This includes Q&A, which we will conduct after the presentation. This call is also webcast. It can be accessed via our homepage by clicking on the dedicated banner. Playback of this call will be accessible on our website, but there is no dedicated phone replay service. The supporting information package was published on our website earlier today. It includes the slides, which we will now take you through, as well as the financial statements. Throughout this call, we will be making forward-looking statements. I invite you to refer to our safe harbor statement that appears in the presentation slide, which applies to this call as well. Please read it carefully. And now, over to you, Guillaume.

Thank you, Hélène. Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us today for our Q1 2024 results call. We are here in Amsterdam with Thomas to run you through our results. Nearly three months have passed since we last met, at the time of full year results, we highlighted at this occasion the persisting complex operating environment, which in the meantime has not shown any sign of improvements, notably the geopolitical tensions and supply chain challenges. In this context, the supply chain remains the pacing factor for the ramp-up, and we closely cooperate with our suppliers. We continue to invest into our production systems and remain vigilant to actively manage bottlenecks. And we devoted our efforts on quality and execution, notably with a critical onboarding and qualification of skilled workforce. The strong commercial momentum that we observe on wide-body aircraft underpins our decision to increase the production rate for the A350 to 12 aircraft a month in 2028. In Q1, we delivered 142 aircraft, a plus 12% increase year-on-year, roughly in line with our plan. Therefore, I'd like to recall that similarly to last year, we expect the delivery profile to be back-end loaded. Our EBIT adjusted stood at €0.6 billion, reflecting in particular the commercial aircraft deliveries and also the investments to prepare the future and support our Our free cash flow before customer financing was minus 1.8 billion euros, sorry, consistent with inventory buildup as we ramp up across programs. And our full year 2024 guidance remains unchanged. So let's now look at our commercial environments. We booked 170 gross orders during this quarter. On the A320 family, we booked 96 gross orders, bringing our backlog to 7,177 aircraft. Thereof, around two-thirds are for the A321. Moving to the white bodies, we recorded 74 gross orders, including 33 from Korean Air. We're also pleased with a recent announcement from Vietjet and Japan Airline, as well as just earlier today from Indigo, confirming the increasing commercial momentum of the wide-body segments and the airline's confidence in our modern and fuel-efficient aircraft. As a result, and in the absence of cancellation in the quarter, our backlog in units amounted to 8,626 aircraft at the end of March 2024. Looking at helicopters, In Q1, we booked 63 net orders compared to 39 in Q1 last year, mainly in the light and medium segments. We are also very pleased with the trust placed by our customers in our products and services at this year's HeliExpo. During this edition of HeliExpo, we announced 40 firm orders and 115 commitments for a variety of our multi-mission helicopters from customers worldwide. including the framework agreement signed with the helicopter company in Saudi Arabia. In the quarter, we also signed a contract with Skyco Leasing in China for six H175 helicopters and a follow-on order placed by the Japan Coast Guard for three H225 helicopters. We continue to see positive momentum in the civil and military markets, and going forward, We are focused on securing new business opportunities in both our home countries and the export markets. In line with this ambition, we have recently announced the partnership with the Tata Group to establish an H125 final assembly line in India. This new manufacturing facility will serve the Indian civil market and export to some of the neighboring countries. In defense and space, we started the year with a solid order intake of 2 billion euros in the quarter. This includes the extension of previously signed contract for F-100M services. While on air power business line and following the latest order of the Republic of Kazakhstan, we are proud to highlight that the C-295 has now reached a total of 300 orders. Additional orders booked in the first quarter relate mainly to space systems. On the launcher activity, we obviously look forward to the upcoming IN6 maiden flight, targeted between 15th of June and end of July 2024, so this year. This is definitely an important milestone of the year, not only for us, but for Europe and its independent access to space. Voila, now Thomas will take you through our financial

Well, thank you, Guillaume, and hello, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our call. I'm on page six of the presentation, and I would like to take you through our financial performance. As you can see, our Q1 2024 revenues increased to 12.8 billion euros. That is up 9% year-on-year, and it's mainly reflecting the higher number of commercial aircraft deliveries. And on R&D, which you have on the upper right-hand side of the page, our expenses slightly increased versus the Q1 of 2023, and they stood at 0.7 billion. And going forward, we continue to expect our full-year R&D to slightly increase compared to last year. If you turn the page, you can see that our Q1 2024 EBIT adjusted decreased to 0.6 billion from 0.8 billion in Q1 2023. And that reflects the higher commercial aircraft deliveries, but also a one cent hedge rate deterioration. It also reflects investments to prepare the future and the decrease in helicopters from a particularly strong Q1, which we had last year. And it also includes the planned impact from the increased Airbus employee share ownership plan, whose record participation outlines our employees' commitment to our ambitions. And this ESOP plan resulted in a year-on-year expense increase of slightly above 0.1 billion euros. You can see that the Q1 2024 EBIT reported was 0.6 billion euros. And on the right-hand side, you see the total level of EBIT adjustments. They were broadly neutral, and they included negative 13 million euros. The impact is from the dollar working capital mismatch and balance sheet revaluations. positive 51 million euros related to the gain on the Airbus OneWeb satellite and that is linked to the recent acquisition of the remaining 50% of the joint venture and it includes a negative 6 million of other costs including some compliance costs. The financial result was a positive 229 million euros and that mainly reflects a positive impact from the revaluation of certain equity investments and the tax rate on the core business continues to be around 27%. Now the effective tax rate in the quarter is 34% and that is driven by a net deferred tax asset impairment. The resulting net income is 0.6 billion with earnings per share reported of 76 euro cents per share. And our Q1 2024 EPS adjusted stood at 59 cents based on an average of 788 million shares. Now, if you turn the page to page 8, you can see our U.S. dollar exposure coverage. In Q1 2024, $4.5 billion of forwards matured with associated EBIT impact and euro conversions realized at a blended rate of $1.23 versus $1.22 in Q1 2023. And in Q1 2024, we also implemented $4.2 billion of new coverage at a blended rate of $1.12. As a result, our total US dollar coverage portfolio in US dollars stands at $91.4 billion with an average blended rate of $1.22 as compared to $91.7 billion at a rate of $1.23 at the end of 2023. Now, as mentioned in the full year 2023 disclosure, we have adjusted our portfolio this quarter by implementing some rollovers to reflect the delivery target for 2024 and its delivery profile, which we expect to be back-end loaded. Now, let's have a more detailed look at our free cash flow on page nine. Our free cash flow before customer financing was minus 1.8 billion euros in the first quarter, and this outflow, as you can see, was mainly driven by the change in working capital, including the planned inventory buildup, resulting from the execution of our ramp-up plan. The A400M free information continued to weigh on our free cash flow, and our Q1 2024 capex was minus 0.5 billion euros, And that reflects the investment in enhancing and upgrading our industrial system. To support our ramp-up, we expect our capex to continue to increase in 2024, yet at a lower pace relative to previous year. The free cash flow was negative 1.8 billion euros, with nearly no impact from customer financing. And on that topic, I can say that the aircraft financing environment remains solid, with currently sufficient liquidity in financial markets for our products. So that overall, as you can see on the page, our net cash position stood at 8.7 billion euros at the end of March, and our liquidity remains above 30 billion euros. Now, let me conclude this financial part of the presentation before I hand back to Guillaume. And I would say that while Q1 was impacted by some elements that will not repeat in the quarters to come, for example, the expenses linked to the employee share ownership plan, Going forward, we focus on what matters most with a sense of priority and efficiency so that overall, I see these results as consistent with our objectives for the year. And with that, I would like to hand it back to Guillaume.