The recovery of air traffic, long-term fleet planning by airlines and a progressive return to normality in the industry are behind the 4,200 million net profit with which the Airbus group has closed the year 2022. These These were the first keys that Guillaume Faury, executive director of Airbus, explained this morning at the traditional annual meeting with the media in Toulouse, which this year has resumed the face-to-face format.
The locomotive of the group in this record year continues to be the commercial aircraft division: last year there were orders for 1,078 aircraft, although after cancellations due to different circumstances, where the global geopolitical situation and trade sanctions in Russia have a special weight, this demand ended up being 820 units, a result that is also well above the previous year, in which 507 aircraft were ordered.
"The industry continued its recovery during 2022 and we delivered strong financial results even in a challenging operating environment. This prevented our supply chain from recovering at the rate we expected. The company had to adjust its operations accordingly. This led to making the deliveries of commercial aircraft at a slightly lower rate than we originally planned. Now we are adapting our production to match the supply," Faury acknowledged regarding this division.
Airbus Helicopters, the rotary-wing industrial part of the group, recorded 362 net orders throughout 2022, slightly less than in 2021, when it sold 414 units, although it continues to lead its sector. Meanwhile, the military and space division, Airbus Defense and Space, billed a figure identical to the previous year: 13,700 million euros. In this case, Spain has been a key point in reaching the figure, as it includes 20 latest-generation Eurofighter fighters for the Air Force, as well as the Phase 1B demonstrator of the Future Combat Air System and the Eurodrone, an unmanned aerial system.
The flagship aircraft in the commercial aircraft division is the base A320 of a single-aisle family. Here the demand for new devices has been adapted to the availability of suppliers. Airbus is currently advancing towards a monthly production rate of 65 aircraft, more than two per day, mainly the A320 and A321 models by the end of 2024 and there will be 10 more, reaching 75 per month in 2026. In addition, the entry into service of the A321XLR, a long-haul, single-aisle aircraft, of which Iberia is one of the first customers to use it for some very specific transatlantic lines, takes place in the second quarter of 2024.
In the twin-aisle or wide-body aircraft segment, the monthly build rate of the A330, the aircraft-type for long-haul flights, increased to almost three units per month by the end of 2022. The company will now aim to reach four units per month in 2024, taking into account the slowdown in the production of some of its suppliers. After the withdrawal of the A380 and the end of the production of the four-engine A340 in its different versions a few years ago, the alternative model for high-capacity and long-haul flights is the A350, the latest model from the house. This aircraft is produced at a rate of six units per month, although with the growing demand for long-distance international travel, a plan is being worked on to allow up to nine A350s to be built by the end of 2025. This model has become an aircraft key for flights between different continents on airlines such as Air France, British Airways, Japan Airlines, Lufthansa, or Iberia. The A350 has also been incorporated into other Spanish operators for their tourist flights such as Iberojet, from the Barceló hotel group and World2Fly, from the Balearic hotel company Iberostar.
In what directly affects a facility based in Spain, the factory next to the San Pablo airport in Seville, Airbus delivered a dozen A400M military transport aircraft, two units more than in 2021. Even so, the program continues to be very below its potential and what was originally expected, as a global substitute for most old-generation military cargo aircraft, and it continues to be one of the programs that most concerns and occupies the company's leadership.
On the other hand, this year of record profits for the group globally has wiped out the downward results of the space subdivision within defense and space: its EBIT fell to 384 million compared to the almost 700 it obtained in the previous exercise. Broadly speaking this is due to inflation, the loss of two Pleiades Neo satellites in December and the continued delays in the Ariane 6 space launcher.
However, the Board of Directors will propose the payment of a 2022 dividend of €1.80 per share (2021: €1.50 per share) at the 2023 Annual General Meeting to be held on April 19, 2023, with The proposed payment date is April 27, 2023, the year in which Airbus does not expect to face major slowdowns in the world economy or in air traffic, which it sees as constantly growing and recovering, as it also sees a good recovery in the pace in its huge supply chain and also recognizes itself with more muscle to deal with the delivery of its products and services.
