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EADS clueless on losses after aircraft delays
16 Nov 2009Airbus parents EADS admitted today it just does not know how much it will lose this year because of the hugely overbudget and delayed A380 superjumbo and A400M military carrier projects.
While the two-year late but now in-service A380 has weighed heavily on EADS results in previous years, the four-year late, €2 billion (£1.7 billion) over-budget A400M is set to wipe out underlying earnings at the aerospace giant.
In a third-quarter statement today, EADS said underlying profits for the first nine months of 2009 came in at €1.7 billion. The civil and military aircraft manufacturer, which employs 10,000 people in the UK, said it expects earnings before exceptional items to be €2 billion.
However, A400M provisions in the year to date are already running at €2.4 billion and the company was forced to admit it cannot “estimate reliably” what the full-year costs will be for breaching delivery contracts.
