Good afternoon and welcome to the Avio Nine-Month 2024 Results Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal the conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Nevio Quattrin, Investor Relations Manager. Please go ahead. Good evening, good evening everyone, and welcome to the Nine-Month 2024 Results Conference Call
Good afternoon to you all, and thank you for joining the call. I would suggest we move to page four for the nine-month 2024 highlights. The most important thing of the last nine months was we successfully completed the last Vega flight. As you know, the Vega launcher was retired with this last flight. The flight was successful. Now we hand it over to Vega C to continue the launch service. In fact, regarding Vega C, the other important thing we did at the beginning of October, we performed successfully the second test of the Zefiro 40 motors, the second stage motor that you know was under redesign for the NASA part. So we already had executed a successful test in May. We executed another one for repetition purposes.
It went extremely well, and that obviously paved the way for a launch of Vega C, a return-to-flight launch on December 3rd, lifting up a Sentinel-2C satellite for the European Commission. In parallel, we have been working quite a bit on the U.S. defense business. In particular, we have entered into a partnership with ACMI, a real estate developer, to start planning and design activities for a solid rocket motor production facility in the U.S. Overall, in terms of financials, the first nine months show growth of profits and revenues with respect to the same period of 2023. The net financial position is pretty much stable overall. As always, it's a bit affected by seasonality, and this time I will come to that point by some last-minute issues, but give or take, it's a stable and positive cash position.
So when you put this all together, we essentially confirm the 2024 guidance as we had anticipated in March. On page five, some comments around the preparation for the return-to-flight of Vega C. As I said before, in May, we had successfully fired the first Zefiro 40, and in October, we did another one with improved design and with the use of the new material. So this test was performed under different conditions than the other one to fully test the range of performance of the motor. And so now we can conclude the motor is fully qualified for flight, and we actually will be using this motor on December 3 on Vega C. On page six, you see some pictures. These are now a few days old.
The two-day-old Vega C launcher, as we speak, is fully integrated on the launch pad. The reality is only the satellite needs to be brought to the launch pad. For the rest, the rocket is ready to go and therefore is ready to fly by December 3 with Sentinel-1C, which is an Earth observation, high-resolution Earth observation satellite of the Copernicus constellation for the European Commission. We are excited to execute this launch. It's a very important one. We hold a number of contracts with the European Commission. Even the last satellite we launched in September with Vega was one of the Copernicus satellites. It's very important that we serve this customer at best. I have to say this is also going to be the largest, heaviest satellite ever lifted by a Vega-class vehicle.
It will be a very important and exciting flight. On page seven, this is the same page we have seen in previous quarterly reports. Nothing particularly new other than we are exactly executing on the plan that we had communicated to you at the beginning of the year. We have performed the Vega flight, the Zefiro 40 tests, the Ariane 6 maiden flight, and we are preparing now for the last flight of Vega and most probably between the end of the year or maybe beginning of next year, another flight of Ariane 6. These will pave the road for a busy 2025 with as many as four Vega C flights and up to six Ariane 6 flights, as we may estimate.
So the situation will get busier, will drive our production rate forward, and will also enable us to obviously go back to full capacity utilization. Now, what has happened over the past few months? On page eight, as you know, the order backlog of our defense business has grown very rapidly. A focus on this is important now because, as you can see from the graph on the left side of the page, the order backlog for defense activities grew probably tenfold with respect to what it was in 2019. And it's about EUR 300 million now, and it's not yet incorporating, for example, the CAMM-ER Polish contract that is likely to, it's already been signed at the level of the customer and MBDA. It will flow down to us, hopefully by the end of the year. That's what we target.
And so if this will happen, you will see this number growing substantially further before the end of the year. Now, when you convert this backlog into the future production volumes for the years to come, you see that there is quite a bit of a sharp increase in production volumes for the next few years, and even more so when we will include the Polish contract for CAMM-ER. But none of this yet incorporates already the U.S. new contract that has just started in July, as you know, with very small initial orders. But if successfully executed, they have the potential of generating an upside that is quite significant with respect to what we are already doing. So this is to say that probably 2024 will be remembered on our side for one very important transition towards a much more relevant defense business within our portfolio.
For this very reason, on page nine, we reported a few days ago of having entered into a partnership with the ACMI Group in the U.S. ACMI is a real estate developer that supports typically the development of large industrial parks for either defense or space activities. In particular, here there are a couple of snapshots of things that they have supported doing in the U.S. facilities for NASA or for defense activities for the Navy, for example, for the Naval Surface Warfare Center. So we have entered into a partnership with them to design and plan a solid rocket motor production facility in the U.S. This is essentially in support to our expectation to grow in production volumes and size of orders from U.S. customers for this type of product that inevitably requires that at some point in the future we be ready to manufacture in the U.S.
So this is a long-term effort, of course, but it's very important that we start now, and this may also be a good way to attract financial support from different sources and shareholders and stakeholders. So that's the executive summary. I will now ask Alessandro Agosti, our CFO, to give you a summary of our nine-month financials.
Thank you, Giulio. Good evening, everybody. Let's move to page 11. We reported our order backlog evolution over the last five years. We show a compound annual growth rate of almost 20%. Backlog of EUR 1.3 billion is the highest of the company history and about three times the yearly revenues, thus providing strong visibility in the medium term. In the nine months of 2024, order intakes amounted to approximately EUR 260 million. A major portion of intakes of EUR 100 million related to defense propulsion activities for Aster, EUR 90 million related to Ariane 6, in particular intakes of P120, P160 motors, in view of the production ramp-up following the successful maiden flight of Ariane 6 last July, and the remaining orders acquired were for Vega E development.
In addition to these orders acquired in the nine months, there are significant further orders in the process of being acquired within the year ended to confirm the guidance. Among these, for defense propulsion, the new contract with Poland, as mentioned before by Giulio, and for space business, Vega E development activity at completion and Vega C increase for production cadence. Following the recent growth in defense order intake, you can see that defense propulsion backlog has almost reached 25% of the total order backlog at the end of September. Defense backlog is higher than Ariane backlog waiting for the ramp-up following the successful maiden flight of Ariane 6, and more than half of Vega backlog waiting for the ramp-up following the return-to-flight of Vega C that now is scheduled in less than one month in next December the 3rd.
60% of backlog is for production and 40% is for development activities. Shall we move to page 12, where we report the revenues? Revenues significantly increased by 25% compared to the first nine months of previous year. Such increase has been principally driven by defense propulsion activities, technology development projects funded by NextGenerationEU program, as well as SRM production and development activities. Defense propulsion revenues accounted for 16% in the first nine months of 2024 revenues. 55% of revenues come from production and 45% from development activities. On page 13, we reported the main financial results for the first nine months of 2024 compared to the first nine months of 2023. Order backlog is substantially in line with previous year thanks to the intakes from defense propulsion, Ariane 6 launch vehicle booster, and big SRM development.
Significant increase in revenues of about 25% has been principally driven by defense propulsion production and technology development projects. EBITDA Reported increased compared to the nine months of 2023, principally as a result of contribution of our revenue for defense propulsion and technology development projects, as well as for lower energy costs. In the nine months, non-recurring costs were significantly lower than previous corresponding period in 2023 for lower activity for Vega C return-to-flight, as we almost completed the such activity and ready to return-to-flight on next December. This reduction in non-recurring costs led to an even better improvement in terms of EBITDA reported. The decrease in net financial position compared to 2023 was expected. It is mainly attributable to the effect of the transfer of cash advances to subcontractors and to seasonality of cash advances for clients.
In addition, at the end of September, we had some specific contingent shift of certain collections expected by year-end that were collected in October, first days of October. Simply, we can consider that on October the 2nd, the positive net cash position returned positive at about EUR 30 million. Let's move on page 14, where we reported the quarterly pattern of EBITDA in cash generation. We confirmed the concentration of contribution in the last quarter of the year as in the past. We expect to return to a positive net cash position by the end of 2024. Finally, on page 15, we reported the guidance. As a consequence of the result of 9 Months 2024, we confirmed the guidance that we provided to the market on the first quarter of 2024.
With order backlog between EUR 1.5 and EUR 1.6 billion, with estimated 15% growth versus 2023, mainly thanks to new orders from defense propulsion. Backlog started to roll out for the first time in this year. Revenues between EUR 370 and EUR 390 million, with a 10% growth versus 2023, from growth in defense from defense propulsion activities and technology development projects. EBITDA reported is expected between EUR 21 and EUR 26 million, with a 10% growth versus 2023, and Adjusted EBITDA expected between EUR 28 and EUR 33 million. Finally, net income is expected between EUR 6 and EUR 10 million, with a 10-20% growth versus previous year, also thanks to marginal contribution from financial charges. I completed my presentation, and this is brought back to the meeting.
Thank you, Giulio. Thank you, Alessandro. We can now open the Q&A session.
Thank you. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we'll pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question comes from Andrea Bonfa at Banca Akros.
Hello, good afternoon. I hope you can hear me. I do apologize, but my line was pretty bad, so at least on my side. But anyway, I got a couple of questions. One is related to the fact that you confirmed your guidance, especially on the backlog. That's in case of something around 250-350 million EUR of potential new orders in the fourth quarter of the year. And if you can elaborate on that, if it's more defense or space activity or development or whatever. And with reference to defense, I mean, I read on the internet that the U.K. government approved the financial package for the Polish order. So I'm wondering if you can confirm on that, if that is an acceleration on that front. Thank you very much.
Andrea, I will let maybe Alessandro answer in more detail if needed. But for sure, between now and year-end, we have, first of all, to crunch quite a bit of revenue. And yes, the order intake would have to be more than EUR 300 million to get to EUR 1.5 billion-EUR 1.6 billion, because we have to catch up for another EUR 150 million revenue as well. So it would have to be way in excess of EUR 300 million. It has to be another intake of maybe EUR 400 million or so to get to that point. Now, on that front, as you know, we not only have the CAMM-ER and other projects. We also have a couple of contracts coming from ESA, the last ones on Vega E at completion, the last tranche of Vega E at completion, and Vega C contract, which come from the past.
And so we still have the last tranches of this contract that need to be finalized, and hopefully we should be able to do it by the end of the year. Now, regarding the orders of the UK, I didn't quite get the questions for defense. I don't know of a direct link between the orders we get and the orders that the prime contractors get at the level of MBDA, because the flow down from MBDA to us is not instantly flowing, how can I say? They make a number of export sales for domestic sales, and every now and then we get a flow down order. So what I can report to you is that by any measure on Aster in particular, and now also in CAMM-ER, orders are growing every month here.
By the end of the year, we will have a very substantial overall defense order book. And I hope that that will also come along. I hope, I mean, I count that that will also come along with some cash advance. So, I mean, all this massive rush towards new orders or order intake by the end of the year is also a rush towards accumulation of additional cash. Cash advance, as you know, is needed to feed the supply chain and so on.
Andrea, you confirmed the guidance on the backlog. That means that considering we had EUR 280 million of revenue end of September, our guidance for the revenue end of the year is EUR 390 million. So it means that we will expect an amount of order intakes from Vega E at completion, Vega C increase of cadence, and the Polish CAMM-ER contract in an order of magnitude, as Giulio mentioned before, between EUR 400 million at least.
Okay, thank you very much.
Once again, to ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. Seeing no further questions, I'd like to turn the conference back over to management for closing remarks.
Thank you. Thank you, everyone who have joined the call.
Thank you and have a nice weekend.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.