Revenues Increase 15 Percent, Net Income Rises 19 Percent

EADS reports that it achieved strong revenue and underlying profit growth for the full year 2012. Despite a difficult macro-economic environment, EADS saw continued momentum in its commercial activities while defence revenues were broadly stable.

The order intake(5) totalled $134 billion in 2012 while EADS’ order book increased in value to $739.6 billion at the end of the year. Revenues amounted to $78.83 billion. The EBIT (Earnings Before Interest and Taxes) before one-off of around $4 billion reflected the strong operational performance at Airbus Commercial with positive contributions from Eurocopter and Astrium. The reported EBIT increased to $2.8 billion. The Net Cash position at the end of the year was $16 billion. “EADS achieved double-digit revenue and profit growth during 2012 while the order backlog increased further,” said EADS CEO Tom Enders. “A strong focus on deliveries helped to significantly improve cash generation during the fourth quarter.

"Going forward, the focus on bottom line growth remains our priority number one as a management team. And there’s still some way to go to meet our profitability targets. If anything, the new governance, the new shareholder structure and the new Board as of end March will further energize the company and its employees on their successful international growth path.”

For the full year 2012, EADS’ revenues increased by 15 percent to $78.83 billion (FY 2011: $64.1 billion). This performance was driven mainly by higher volume and more favourable U.S. dollar rates at Airbus Commercial as well as solid increases at Eurocopter and Astrium. Revenues at Eurocopter and Astrium were boosted by the services businesses, including Vector Aerospace and Vizada. The companies acquired in 2011 contributed around $2 billion to the 2012 revenues. Despite the overall defence environment, defence revenues were flat compared to 2011.

Physical deliveries remained strong with a record 588 aircraft for Airbus Commercial, 29 aircraft for Airbus Military, 475 helicopters at Eurocopter and the 53rd consecutive successful Ariane 5 launch.

As the basis for its 2013 guidance, EADS expects the world economy and air traffic to grow in line with prevailing independent forecasts and assumes no major disruption due to the current sovereign debt crisis. In 2013, gross commercial aircraft orders should be above the number of deliveries, in the range of 700 aircraft. Airbus deliveries should continue to grow to between 600 and 610 commercial aircraft. Due to lower A380 deliveries and assuming an exchange rate of €1 = $1.35, EADS revenues should see moderate growth in 2013.

Excluding the known wing rib feet A380 impact in 2013 of around $111 million based on 25 deliveries, going forward, from today’s point-of-view, the “one-offs” should be limited to potential charges on the A350 XWB program and foreign exchange effects linked to PDP mismatch and balance sheet revaluation. The A350 XWB program remains challenging. Any schedule change could lead to an increasingly higher impact on provisions.

FMI: www.eads.com