turbulence continues for Airbus

After detecting a defect on metal panels on certain A320s, the European aircraft manufacturer is sanctioned by the financial markets.

Monday, December 1, Airbus saw its share price plummet: minus 10% in the morning, the biggest drop in the CAC, minus 5.8% at the close at the end of the day. However, after the discovery of a problem with defective fuselage panels on several of these A320s, the firm reacted very quickly, in less than 48 hours. It thus assured that it had contained the incident, and launched an express inspection of the aircraft potentially concerned.

But, this concern for quality came at a bad time since last week Airbus had already faced another failure, a computer bug this time, on software, a flight control computer. Each time, the aeronautics giant has played up transparency and put forward the precautionary principle, but, far from it, it has not succeeded in completely reassuring investors.

However, the problems are a priori resolved. But what the markets especially doubt is Airbus’ ability to meet its delivery schedule. The stated objective is around 820 deliveries for this year 2025. In November, Airbus would have delivered between 72 and 74 aircraft, which would bring its total deliveries since the start of the year to 659, in the best case scenario. It therefore has around 160 left to honor in this month of December alone, which is almost an impossible mission, even if it works hard on these different production lines.
If Airbus has no cash flow problems, these delivery delays could nevertheless cost it dearly: the investment bank Citi cites, for example, an impact of around 15 million euros on profits per aircraft not delivered this year, or hundreds of millions of euros lost. This is why investors are expecting Airbus results to be worse than expected, especially since commercial aviation activities were already in slight decline in recent months. However, the group should not be too destabilized. This summer, thanks to its defense and space activities, Airbus posted a first half net profit up 85%.