We started the year 2024 well. In the first two months, we delivered 79 civil aircraft, which is 13 more than in the same period last year. The figures for January and February show that we are on track to achieve our goal of around 800 deliveries this year.

In 2023, we demonstrated that we can significantly increase production. Investors trust that we can achieve this again this year. If we reach our goal of increasing the production rate of the A320 series to 75 aircraft per month by 2026, Airbus will achieve significant efficiency gains, which would positively impact profitability.

We are significantly increasing the dividend, reflecting our positive cash flow. However, investors focus more on the outlook than on the dividend yield. They trust that we will continue to increase cash flow.

We certainly don't do that. I don't want to comment on what Boeing does. At Airbus, we generally invest with a very long-term perspective. We are already thinking about the next generation of hydrogen-based aircraft, and a possible successor to the A320 in the next decade. In our capital allocation, we have a strong focus on the long-term viability of the company.

Last year, we spent around 3 billion euros on research and development. This will continue to increase in the coming years, not disproportionately to revenue, but roughly in proportion to it. Within this budget, we still have many projects related to our current portfolio, such as the A321XLR or the development of the A350 freighter version. However, as time goes on, more of these projects will be replaced by future technologies.

Entry into service is planned for the third quarter of this year, as announced. The aircraft is basically ready. We are now discussing the certification process. So we are very confident that the timetable will be met.

Yes, there are specific requirements related to the special features of the aircraft. It has a Rear Centre Tank, and there are special safety requirements that need to be certified. We are currently in that process.

Pre-commitments are indeed required from us, but also from suppliers. For example, we made a pre-investment in personnel last year and hired about 13,000 new employees. Now these employees need to be trained for our processes. At the same time, we are expanding our global network of A320 final assembly lines with two more, one in China and one in the US. So by the end of 2025, we will have a total of ten.

Today, we have a much closer relationship with our supply chain than we did two or three years ago. Our procurement team works much closer with our suppliers, including the suppliers of our suppliers, to detect bottlenecks early on. Most of these are not financial in nature but operational. In very rare cases, it is about bringing suppliers together with a bank. What we avoid is direct financial support.

Absolutely. It is no secret that we have a bottleneck on the engine side. This is less of a risk for 2024 because we have very reliable contracts and agreements with Pratt & Whitney and CFM. There still needs to be a significant ramp-up there. The same goes for many other parts, including cabin parts, and auxiliary power units.

Our orientation is clear. Although we did not achieve our originally targeted production goal in 2022, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we did so in 2023. However, we are still in an environment that includes significant risks.

The programme is not yet profitable. It will be profitable when we achieve a monthly production rate of 14, as planned for 2026. We need to manage the industrial ramp-up to a rate that allows us to distribute fixed costs over a sufficiently large number of aircraft. And that's the case with a rate of 14.

Spirit Aerosystems is an important supplier for us, including for the A220. Therefore, we have a strong interest in a very stable relationship. That's why we support Spirit operationally with our teams to work on improvements, and we are discussing with Spirit what the best option is. The outcome of these discussions will be the result of our conversations with Spirit.

The important thing is that we have a stable relationship with this supplier.

That's hard to say. That also depends on other people. The timeline Boeing has is difficult to predict.

We have not so far communicated any medium-term targets in this regard. First, we need to advance the production ramp-up. Then we can stabilize production at a high level. This is a prerequisite for working through the extensive order backlog. We are approaching record levels of deliveries, similar to those in 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic. At that time, the Airbus Group achieved a margin of 10%.

The Defence and Space division experienced financial burdens in the second half of 2023, affecting individual satellite programmes. The required revaluation of these programmes reduced our result by around 600 million euros.

In the medium term, the division is expected to achieve an operating margin in the high single-digit percentage range.

It's going well. We aim to achieve higher autonomy and entrepreneurial responsibility within the respective business lines of the division. To this end, at the beginning of this year, we transferred 15,000 employees from central areas and centralized operations into three areas: Air Power, Space Systems, and Connected Intelligence.

Geopolitical conditions drive our defence business. Last year, we achieved the highest order intake in the history of the company in the Defence and Space segment, with 15.7 billion euros.

It takes about three to five years for this to be reflected in the results.

We always said that there was no certainty that our discussions with Atos would result in a contract or transaction. Therefore, we conducted a due diligence process to confirm that this acquisition would make sense for Airbus both strategically and financially and operationally. After weeks of intensive discussions, the board and top management decided not to pursue the transaction further. We concluded that the risks outweighed the opportunities for Airbus.

From my perspective, our financial capacity is not the limiting factor in making acquisitions. Rather, it is important for us to find the right targets that can advance us in terms of content. When you think about growth in the commercial aviation sector, there isn't really anything we could acquire. In the helicopter sector, I would also say that we would quickly reach antitrust limits. So it will be more about looking for capabilities and functional things that can advance us – such as digitization.

Take the Future Combat Air System (FCAS), for example. It's not just the aircraft that is the crucial element, but the entire system surrounding it. This includes a so-called Combat Cloud, where various systems are interconnected as part of the FCAS, such as manned aircraft with unmanned companion aircraft. In this Combat Cloud, cybersecurity and real-time data management play a significant role. Data security and computing are increasingly important for our civil aircraft division as well. Therefore, the strategy to enter more into the field of digitization is important not only for the Defence and Space division, but for the entire group. It is in this context that our recently announced agreement to acquire Cologne-based IT and cybersecurity company Infodas should also be seen.

We are always looking around to see if there are opportunities that arise.

It falls into the same category as digitization. Of course, there are many projects that we are already doing on a smaller scale, also in the financial area. For example, how can relatively standardized processes be handled by machines? We can certainly imagine doing this on a larger scale as well. So that's also part of the search field we have regarding digitization.

A very, very small part. There is always a certain delta, and you can see that in the figures for gross orders and net orders. There are situations where an airline cancels an order. This is a vanishingly small number. Moreover, this is not an immediate financial loss for us, because airlines make pre-delivery payments. These are payments made before we even start producing anything. And these payments are contractually owed to us. So this is not a challenge that keeps us awake at night.

Last year, with 2,094 net orders, we set an absolute record. View that in relation to the 735 deliveries. It would be virtually impossible to bring in such a large number of orders every year. Our order backlog would grow endlessly. So it is completely natural that after the extraordinary year 2023, the order intake normalizes a bit.

Thomas Toepfer, born in 1972, has been the Chief Financial Officer of Airbus since September. With a PhD in business administration, he previously held the CFO position at Covestro. His career includes roles at McKinsey, Kion, and Karstadt. A native of Hamburg, he spent six months as an exchange student at a high school in Bordeaux. He studied at the Otto Beisheim School of Management (WHU) in Koblenz.