Airbus Se Unsp/Adr

ladies and gentlemen thank you for standing by welcome to the airbus nine month 2024 results release conference call i am sharon the operator for this conference please note that for the duration of the presentation all participants will be in a listen only mode and the conference is being recorded after the presentation there'll be an opportunity to ask questions at this time i would like to turn the conference over to your host guillaume fory thomas and elaine please go ahead

Thank you, Sharon, and good evening, ladies and gentlemen. This is the Airbus 9 Months 2024 Results Release Conference Call. Guillaume Faury, our CEO, and Thomas Topper, 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 conclude 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 and hello everyone and thank you for joining us today for the nine month result call. We're indeed here in Amsterdam with Thomas to run you through our results. Before we get there, As I said in the previous call, I'm sure you've already read our press release about the leadership decisions, and I guess you will have questions at a later stage, but let me share a few words about the topic. First, the board of directors has announced, has said, has decided that they will propose to the shareholders the renewal of my mandate as Airbus CEO and executive member of the board at the next AGM. So most of you know me by now and very committed to the company, very engaged, and I will continue to do so. I am both honored and humbled by this decision of our board of directors. That's obviously important for the company and for myself. Second, on commercial aircraft, we are announcing that Lars Wagner, who is the CEO of MTU Aero Engines, will join us at the end of his current mandate that will be completed by end of next year, by end of 2025, and join us so beginning of 2026 to then succeed Christian Scherer, who is today the CEO of Commercial Aircraft at Airbus. And I insist in saying that both Christian and I are very excited with the perspective of Lars joining and Lars succeeding Christian because we consider Lars is one of the very best leaders that we have in our industry. In the meantime, Christian and I will keep working together in a way that I consider and we consider a very efficient way in a very efficient manner as we've been doing so far to deliver on our objectives and manage our challenges. We'll then be happy to welcome Lars. Again, I'm convinced that Lars' diverse experience in aerospace engineering, operations, business management, and which, by the way, includes more than 10 years already spent at Airbus, that Lars' experience and talent will be a great addition to our Airbus Executive Committee. So that's it for that part. And now going to our nine-month results. We continue to operate in an environment that we qualify as complex and fast-changing. The geopolitical uncertainties and some specific supply chain, what we call challenges or issues that have materialized in the course of this year force us to adapt constantly. Against that backdrop, we remain focused on our priorities. which are the production ramp-up in commercial aircraft and the transformation of our defense and space divisions. So two main priorities short-term, ramp-up and defense and space. We allocate our resources on what matters most, which means we are very focused on what we are doing and we want to be leveraging our core business activities to further drive operational efficiency, therefore meeting customers' demands. In this challenging operating environments, and I'd like to say together with our suppliers, we are progressing on our plan, always keeping safety and quality at the core of what we do. I insist. In that context, I'm very pleased with the delivery of the first XLR to Aliberia that took place yesterday. Having launched XLR at the Paris Airshow in 2019 and seeing this milestone today is a great satisfaction because it's indeed a significant milestone and I really want to thank all the teams at Airbus and beyond Airbus for the successful development and certification of this latest and innovative variant of our incredible A320 family. In Q3, we delivered 174 commercial aircraft bringing our year-to-date deliveries to almost 500 at 497 aircraft as compared to 488 last year. It leads us to a delivery profile for the remainder of 2024 that is more back-loaded than we anticipated. So we have an ambitious year-end rally in front of us Not the first time, but always an interesting situation. Our EBIT adjusted stood at 2.8 billion euros as 9 months 2024. This reflects the commercial aircraft deliveries and the solid performance at Airbus helicopters, but it also includes the charges recorded in the first half of the year on our space business. The free cash flow before customer financing was at minus 4.8 billion euros. notably reflecting the inventory buildup that supports the Q4 deliveries and the ramp-up. And on that basis, we maintain our 2024 guidance. Let's look now at our commercial environment and starting with commercial aircraft. The demand remains strong, if not very strong, as of nine months, and we booked 667 gross orders, including 340 in the third quarter. On the A220, we booked 10 orders from Air Baltic, which is, as you know, the largest A220 customer in Europe. On the A320 family, we booked 457 gross orders. So again, a very strong order intake for the 320 family. So 457, out of which 260 in the third quarter. bringing our backlog to 7,253 for this family of aircraft, and more than two-thirds are for the A321. Moving to the widebodies, we recorded 200 gross orders as of nine months, and that includes 37 A330 NAOs and 33 A350s, underpinning the good momentum for our widebody family. Nine-month net orders amounted to 648 aircraft following 19 cancellations, and our backlog in units stood at the end of September at the record level of 8,749 aircraft. Looking at helicopters, in the nine months 24, we booked 308 net orders to be compared with the 191 in the nine months 2023. and the 308 net orders include 43 H225 aircraft. This confirms the positive dynamic for this family of aircraft, the so-called Super Puma or H225 family. And in the third quarter, we have signed a contract for 12 H225M, the military variant of the multi-role helicopters with the Republic of Iraq, which is not yet reflected in the order book. I am pleased with this performance. We continue to see positive momentum in both civil and military markets, and we remain focused on securing new business opportunities in both the home countries, but also on the export markets. And now on to order intake recorded at Defense and Space. Here we continue to see a strong order momentum across our business. And as of 9 months 24, the division at the order intake of 11 billion euros, out of which 4.5 billion euros in this third quarter. So very strong momentum in the quarter. On our space business, it includes in particular an important satellite called SATCOM BV Dry. It's a prime contract for the next generation of secure military satellite systems for the German armed forces, namely Bundeswehr. Let me stress that the contracts booked recently reflect our new selective bidding strategy, as we call it. However, despite the improvements we are making in the space business, the environment remains competitive, highly competitive and somewhat disruptive. So it's now about execution. More concretely, we are fixing our foundations while assessing strategic alternatives, rethinking the European landscape and evaluating potential consolidation options. Indeed, the space industry in Europe is undergoing major challenges in Europe and outside of Europe and needs to transform in order to remain competitive against other global players, including some new players. We'll continue to explore ways to strengthen the European space sector by streamlining investments, creating scale and becoming more competitive in order to add value for our shareholders. In parallel, we continue to work on enhancing the defense and space overall performance, our transformation plan. As you recall, at the end of last year, we introduced a new organizational structure by moving engineering and operation functions to the three fully accountable business lines. And in October, last month, this month, we went one step further and informed our social partners about the plan to adapt the division's organization and workforce. This shall result in the transfer of some headquartered functions to the business lines in the course of next year, in the course of 2025, and in a reduction of up to 2,500 positions until mid of 2026. These measures contribute to seeking to restore competitiveness of the division and will contribute to securing its profitability trajectory. So that concludes my remarks at that stage, and I hand over to Thomas that will take you through our financials.