AFP, PARIS : The European aerospace giant EADS, heavily committed to a superjumbo airliner, exuded confidence but reported a loss owing to development costs and the effect of the SARS scare on Airbus deliveries.
The group, which makes military equipment as well as Airbus airliners, stood by its full-year forecast for operating profit, saying that profits usually surged in the last quarter.
And it reported a strong order book, partly because of a doubling of nine-month orders for Airbus airliners, although the number of airliners delivered had fallen by 20 partly because of the SARS health scare.
Airbus said it expected to make these sales up in the last three months of 2003.
European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company is the second-biggest aerospace group, after US arch-rival Boeing. It is making a huge commitment to development of the superjumbo, double-decker A380 airliner, capable of carrying more than 500 passengers.
In the first nine months EADS made a net loss of 124 million euros (143.84 million dollars) compared with a profit of 23 million euros in the same period last year.
In the third quarter the group reduced its net loss to 58 million euros from a loss of 68 million euros in the third quarter of last year but net profit before write-downs and exceptional items surged by 239 percent to 105 million euros.
But EADS stood by a forecast that profit before interest and tax for 2003 would be about 1.4 billion euros, and that sales would roughly equal the figure for 2002 of 29.90 billion euros.
“Our performance during the first nine months of 2003 is in line with our plans,” the joint executive chairmen, Philippe Camus and Rainer Hertrich, said in a statement.
“EADS will grow to become a 40-billion-euro revenues company in the medium term, taking account of the A380 programme,” they said.
EADS said it was counting on a “strong performance” in the last quarter and still expected to sell 300 Airbus airliners in the whole year.
In the first nine months, the results before exceptional items and the writing down of the value of assets, showed a profit of 336 million euros, down from 493 million euros.
Profit before interest and tax fell by 23 percent to 784 million euros and the figure for the Airbus division slumped by 35 percent to 701 million euros from 1.07 billion euros. EADS said that this fall reflected an increase of about 200 million euros in research and development spending.
All divisions, except the Airbus and space activities, had improved their performance owing mainly to defence equipment programmes.
The space division showed a loss before earnings and tax of 184 million euros from a loss of 101 million euros in the same period of last year.
But the aeronautics activities showed an increase of 33 percent in operating profit to 112 million euros from 84 million euros. This increase was driven construction of Tigre and NH90 helicopters.
EADS said that earnings before interest and tax, and before the costs of research and development, were steady at about 2.2 billion euros, despite costs of 88 million euros to reorganise the space division and a sharp fall of delivery of Airbus airliners to 199 from 219 in the same period of last year.
However, orders for Airbus aircraft had doubled to 37 billion euros from 15.4 billion euros in the aame period of last year.
Overall sales by EADS fell by 7.0 percent to 18.53 billion euros and Airbus sales fell by 12.0 percent to 12.05 billion euros.
However the value of orders taken had more than doubled, rising by 121 percent, in the nine months to 49.45 billion euros from 22.34 billion euros.
Nearly half of the orders were for defence equipment, particularly the the future European military transport plane, the A400M.
At the end of September the total order book was worth 186.7 billion euros.
The EADS share price was unchanged Thursday at 17.70 euros in midday trading in Paris, where the overall market was off 0.17 percent. Since January 1 the share has surged 80 percent.
