Good afternoon, this is the Coastal Conference Operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Avio full year 2024 results. As a reminder, all participants are on listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be a Q&A session. For operator assistance via web call, please press the headset icon on the bottom left side of your screen. For conference call assistance, please press * and zero on your telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Nevio Quattrin, Investor Relations. Please welcome, sir.
Good evening, good evening everyone, and welcome to 2024 results conference call of Avio. I'm here with Mr. Giulio Ranzo, CEO of Avio, and Mr. Alessandro Agosti, CFO of the company. In a moment, we will go through the presentation we just published on our website, and in the end, we will welcome your questions. Thank you for your attention, and I leave the floor to Giulio Ranzo.
Thank you all for joining the call for the 2024 year results. If we jump to page four, some of the highlights of the main achievements of the year we just concluded. The results were overall in line with guidance, with revenues and backlog exceeding expectations. Notably, I would say we had a good success with the VB25, the return to flight of Vega C, which was long awaited. It went well. We are now nearly ready to launch the VB26 mission within the second quarter, and that is quite rewarding for us, very important achievement, I would say.
Towards the end of the year, we signed two important contracts, the completion for the development of Vega E, and we also sold the first launch service, the first Vega launch service directly as Avio in our new capacity as launch service provider for the Forum satellite with the European Space Agency. The Ariane 6 maiden flight performed just a few days ago, its first commercial flight successfully. That is also very important and testimony of the fact that Ariane 6 is ramping up towards a regular flight schedule. We also are on track on the new technology development programs that we have long talked about in previous sessions. Of course, we saw in 2024 a very substantial growth of orders in the defense propulsion business. Based on all these results, you will see later on, we made a proposal for a dividend distribution this year as well.
On page five, the main results. Very rapidly, the backlog went all the way up to EUR 1.7 billion. This is a historical record high. It is a very big backlog also compared to revenues, which in 2024 topped up to EUR 441 million. Also, this number is a record high in the history of the company. The EBITDA report jumped to EUR 25.8 million, which compares very well with the expected guidance, is actually towards the upper part of the guidance, and is more than a 20% improvement with respect to 2023. I would say we did our best to secure an increase in earnings, which was very well what the shareholders pushed us to achieve. You see that unfortunately, the net income is only EUR 6.4 million, so no improvement with respect to last year.
Still within the guidance, but no significant improvement, the reason being a higher charge from taxes and less of a result from the financial income. In contrast, the net financial position, which we expected, quite frankly, to be lower than what we have, reached EUR 90 million. Now, that's, to be honest, timing because a lot of it is due to the fact that we signed some large contracts towards the end of the year that were with lots of cash advances, and that's the reason why we see so much cash at year end. We'll talk about it later with Alessandro in the financial section. If we move to page six, 2024 overall was an important year. I would say we had the maiden flight of Ariane 6, very successful.
Once again, our P120 solid rocket motors performed perfectly, and that was very important to untap the longer-awaited growth of the IN6 launcher. We had the last flight of Vega, the previous version of the rocket. This was important. We sort of retired this program after 22 flights, 120 satellites launched with some very good record of success, but also two failures. All in all, it was a good completion of the program. Towards the end of the year, we returned to flight with Vega C, as we had anticipated to you. We just essentially did what we said we would do. Most importantly, we also signed almost EUR 350 million worth of contracts towards the end of the year with the European Space Agency.
As I said before, our first launch service contract as Avio in the capacity of launch service provider that you may recall, it's a new role for us that was formerly performed by ArianeSpace, is now being performed directly by Avio. Another very important achievement was the signature of new contracts with U.S. customers for defense, importantly with Raytheon and with the U.S. Army, but also a relatively large contract with NBDA for the supply of solid rocket motors as well. All of this contributed to this very substantial growth in the defense propulsion order backlog. On page seven, we review just real quick the success of the return to flight mission. Let me highlight on this one thing that is, in my mind, very important for you to keep in mind.
This launch of Vega C demonstrated a payload performance in sun-synchronous orbit of 2.3 tons, which is exactly twice as we did with Vega, the previous version of the rocket. We established a completely different capacity for Europe that is crucial and strategic. Why that? Because these big heavy satellites are typically Earth observation radar technology satellites, very sophisticated technology that can observe Earth over day and night with very accurate images that can also be taken across the clouds. It is a very important piece of technology. We are quite proud not only of having returned to flight, but also having established a capability that, quite frankly, is not that easy to achieve, and it is crucial for Europe for the future.
On page eight, we report just real quick the success for the first commercial flight of IN6, which was performed just a few days ago. That is also quite important. It was with the CSO3 satellite for the French Ministry of Defense. Once again, a very sophisticated spacecraft. Also in this case, the launcher performed nominally. As you know, we have a lot of technology, not only the boosters, but also the turbo pumps for the main liquid propulsion systems. With this launch, we believe we are on track for the ramp-up in production volumes of the P120 and P160 motors that are so crucial for us to secure that our production activities reach again critical mass and therefore that we have a better operating leverage on our fixed costs.
On page nine, we report, as I anticipated before, the signature of this very large contract with the European Space Agency, which were well known. One of it is for the completion of the Vega E launcher development, which Vega E will be the successor of Vega C. It is important because while we stabilize Vega C, we are already preparing the next version of the rocket with even more payload performance and hopefully more efficiency on cost, given that Vega E will feature one less propulsion stage. It will be only three propulsion stages compared to Vega C, which has four. That is important to have as a roadmap for the future.
The second important contract was the signature of the Vega C cadence upgrade as a spaceport with some funding available for us to enhance our capabilities and most important assets all around the launch complex with specific new facilities dedicated to the pre-integration of the launcher to eliminate any bottlenecks in the ground operations that surround the flight activities. This was important to make sure that we would have growth capacity in flight rate. As I said just a few minutes ago, important achievement towards the end of the year, the signature of the Forum satellite as the first mission directly sold as Avio. It will be launched in 2027. It's an ESA satellite.
This tells you, given that we already have 16 or 17 missions in backlog, sending another one and having lots of other missions in pipeline tells you how robust is the Earth observation business, which is what we are addressing with Vega C. On page 11, maybe some status on the development of the P160 booster, which is the successor of the P120. As you may recall, it's a slightly longer booster that will be used for both Ariane 6 and Vega C, and that will provide even more payload performance to both Ariane 6 and Vega C, which is an important tool to continuously improve cost competitiveness because at the end of the day, additional payload performance allows us to have a lower cost per kilogram transported, and therefore it's an important element for competitiveness.
We are preparing for the firing test of the so-called QM3, which will be effectively qualifying for flight, the P160 motor, and it's incredibly important for us to be introduced both on IN6 and Vega C. On page 12, some updates on the progress of the Vega E launcher development program. You may recall that we had fired already in previous years the M10 engine on ground. Now we are working on a number of other surrounding elements of the liquid propulsion systems, the whole complex of valves and other pipings and equipment that are required to make sure that this upper stage with liquid oxygen and methane would work properly. We have successfully achieved the qualification of further subsystems, and therefore we are marching on track towards the critical design review. Some important developments also on Space Rider on page 13.
As you may recall, Space Rider is our somewhat unique application of sending a spacecraft with Vega to space that will have the ability to re-enter atmosphere and land on ground. As you can see now, we have already manufactured the hardware for the first mission, and we are testing this hardware mechanically prior to flight. I am very glad that now all of the hardware is coming together, and we will proceed towards the subsequent ground tests prior to qualification review. I am very glad to see on our side that all the hardware is coming together and similarly on the Thales Alenia side for the spacecraft. Now, on page 14, also some other reports relative to the next-gen EU-funded technology programs that address four different areas of technology development. On one side, you may recall we talked about the liquid oxygen methane technology.
We have two main projects, one addressing an in-flight demonstration with a very small flying prototype, which you see the drawing of here on the bottom left. We have manufactured the tanks and tested the tanks. Now we are integrating all of these prototype rockets together for some ground tests in the course of 2025 with a view to execute the in-flight demonstration sometime in the first part of 2026. We have also been firing parts of the liquid oxygen-methane engine, the 60-ton liquid oxygen-methane engine, the so-called ITRAST engine. You see the photos here of the very first firings. This is a much larger version of the Vega E cryogenic engine. I'm very glad that also that has reached firing test successfully.
Most notably, on the right side of the page, we have also successfully fired a number of times the so-called multi-purpose green engine, which is something that we will install in the Vega C configuration sometime, and that will allow further performance in orbit. This is particularly innovative using green technologies for propulsion. We are marching towards the preliminary design review of the in-orbit service module, again in partnership with Thales Alenia. All of this creates, I would say, a set of technological building blocks that will form the basis for us to start putting together the products of the next generation that will follow Vega C and Vega E and that will come afterwards. As you can see, we are putting together a very rich technological base to face the future with a lot of technology.
On page 15, this is just a recall of what we had posted some time ago, the signature of very relevant defense contracts with NBDA, Raytheon, and U.S. Army. This has been probably the year and the issue of the company that we got most orders ever in defense, no surprise. I want to highlight something. You may have seen from the news a lot of attention in defense over the last two months, but you realize that this contract did not take two months to get to, right? This was work that commenced probably three years ago and that led to success in here. This big wave of defense demand surge is something that was not created in a day, that we worked on for a long time and then reached success.
This, as we can very well see, is further upside with respect to this, both in the U.S., and in Europe, and we are getting prepared for that. I'll say more about it towards the end of this presentation. This is substance. You see that in terms of backlog, we have reached over EUR 400 million worth of backlog in defense propulsion, and it's expected to grow further in the course of 2025, both from U.S., customers and European customers. That is a very good dynamic because it's partially balancing the business mix more between space and defense. With this, I would pass the word to Alessandro to cover the section on financials.
Thank you, Giulio Ranzo . Good evening, everybody. As we move to page 17, we reported order backlog evolution over the last six years that shows a compound annual growth rate higher than 20%.
year-end backlog of EUR 1.7 billion beats its guidance. It is the highest in the company, as Giulio Ranzo said before, and it's about four times the yearly revenue. That's providing strong visibility in the medium term. In 2024, order intakes amounted to approximately EUR 0.8 billion, major portion of EUR 450 million related to Vega with Vega E development for about EUR 300 million and Vega C cadence improvements. Intake for defense propulsion amounted to EUR 260 million, more than double compared to previous year, principally related to CAMIAR and NOSTEL for NBDA. EUR 90 million related to Ariane 6, 4,160 model, the first stage of Ariane 6 launches in view of the production ramp-up following the successful mid-flight last July. Following such intakes, as you can see, Vega backlog represents approximately 50% of the year-end backlog, and defense propulsion growth is 25%.
Production backlog is about 60%, and development backlog is 40% of the total. Defense backlog is nearly three times the Ariane backlog, as you can see in the chart, waiting for the ramp-up of the Ariane 6 launches following the mid-flight of last year. Shall we move on page 18? We reported the prior news, which significantly increased by about 30% compared to previous years, as Giulio Ranzo mentioned before. Such increase is principally driven by defense propulsion activities, technology development projects funded by next-gen EU programs, as well as Vega EU. Vega EU revenues account for approximately 50% of total revenue, and defense propulsion for about 16%. 50% of revenue comes from production activity, and the other 50% from development activities. Shall we move on page 19? We reported the main financial for the year 2024 compared with the year 2023.
Significant decrease in revenue of 30% has been principally driven, as we said before, by propulsion production activities, Vega C, and technology development projects. EBITDA adjusted also increased by about 12% compared to 2023, principally as a result of the contribution of higher revenues for defense propulsion, Vega C development, technology development projects, as well as for lower energy costs compared to previous year. Non-recurring costs were significantly lower than 2023, for lower activities and costs for Vega C to fly mainly concentrated in previous years. This led to an even better improvement in the reported EBITDA for higher than 25%. EBIT was affected by higher capitalization, mainly for Vega C cadence increase and IT improvement projects.
Profit before tax, as shown in the chart, is a result of lower interest income from lower cash available during the year invested in short-term deposits, as well as higher financial expenses and negative foreign exchange rates. On page 20, we reported the main source and uses. Working capital is totally negative thanks to cash advances forwarded intakes towards the year-end. Fixed assets mainly for increase for Vega C cadence increase, IT improvement projects within artificial intelligence, and net depreciation of the period. Net cash position improved versus previous year. Attempted collection of cash advances, as Giulio Ranzo mentioned before, basically from Vega C and defense propulsion towards the year-end. On page 21, we reported the breach of the net cash position between 2023 and 2024.
The increase compared to the previous year is mainly attributable, as you can see, to EBITDA, cash advances for new order intakes, net of capital of the period. In page 22, we reported the quarterly pattern of EBITDA and net cash position. The chart showed the quarterly pattern of these two captions. Generation is concentrated towards the end of the year, typically in the fourth quarter. On page finally 23, we reported the proposed dividend distribution in 2024. Total shareholder return benefit from the dividends distributed in April 2024 for EUR 6 million and about 64% of stock capital gain, more than 100% over the last 12 months. This morning, our board of directors proposed for also for this year to approve the dividend of EUR 3.75 million in compliance with our current dividend policy. I leave you back, Giulio Ranzo , the floor for Outlook and Opportunities sections.
Thank you, Alessandro.
Moving to the outlook for the future, just bear with me a couple of minutes. If you move on page 25, here, rather than the outlook, we have a little bit of the history of the last decade. The reason why I bring this up with you is that looking at the outlook, I think it's important first to see where we are in the economic cycle for the company. In the upper part of the graph, you see what was the sequence of flights with Ariane, let's say, which for us was a main business in 2015 when I started as CEO. As you can see, unfortunately, the Ariane business went tremendously down in volumes due to a much lower than expected transition from Ariane 5 to Ariane 6.
You can very well see that until 2029, we still had reasonable volumes covering a substantial part of our production capacity. While over the last four years, unfortunately, we were systematically below the critical level of plant utilization in a way. This has inevitably affected our ability to deliver on profits. On Vega, we have sadly a similar story because in the first part between 2015 and 2019, we had a somewhat stable flight rate between two and three. In the period from 2020 to 2024, we were expecting to grow in flight rate, but we were unfortunately slowing down by, on one side, the flight anomalies that we suffered, and on the other side, a partial delay in the introduction of Vega C.
Unfortunately, on none of these two products did we have the opportunity to fully utilize our production capacity and, let's say, distribute our fixed costs, right? These were the main reasons why the profitability of the last two years was lower than expected, quite frankly. On the opposite, I would say, look at the interesting dynamic that we had on the defense business. The defense business a decade ago was negligible to the point that we were barely talking about it, right? Only 35 solid rocket motors per year. By 2019, production volumes had already reached nearly 100 motors per year. In 2024, we manufactured 230. We observed a steady growth in defense. As I was telling you just a few minutes ago, this was not built in the last few months because now defense has become very popular.
There is a long-term trend in defense demand growth that comes from very far. It doesn't come from last year or the last six months. As we demonstrated to you with all the backlog we have, we can only expect for the future that this will grow. While we had these somewhat terrible times, I would say, over the last four years where we did not deliver the profits we expected to deliver, we did our job, I believe, in growing the book of business, the backlog. The backlog in the last five years grew from EUR 736 million to EUR 1.7 billion. It grew by EUR 1 billion. We spent time while we faced issues with profits. We faced time to really fill the order backlog and prepare for the future.
What I hope from 2025 onwards is that we really now can fully leverage all the work we have done so far to go towards a steady, profitable growth. In fact, when you look at page 26 and you look at what we expect for 2025, it is a substantial ramp-up in Ariane 6 flight rate and notable ramp-up also in Vega C flight rate. I'm not quite sure now whether we'll do three flights or four flights. We will see. If it is not a fourth flight, probably the fourth flight will be at the very beginning of 2026. We expect, obviously, a very rapid growth in production volumes, right? That is the reason why I expect that 2025 will be now the first of hopefully a long series of growth years. 2025 is also—well, I don't need to speak much about the growth in defense.
You already know. We have long talked about it. We will talk more about it. If we go to page 27, in space, 2025 will be an important year because we will have the 2025 ESA Ministerial Council, which, as you may recall, every three years awards funding for new projects, for developments, or for supporting the so-called exploitation of existing launchers. We have some key objectives and pursuits for funding that are extremely important for us. On one side, we aim at further consolidating Vega C to really and rapidly move towards a flight rate six per year and to further improve the product by eliminating some older technologies and replacing with new ones, trying to also improve the margins where we can and to fully industrialize and deliver more margin. We have to execute on the development of Vega E.
We have the contract now, and we can go towards the completion, but we also need to optimize the configuration of Vega E such that it would be more and more cost-effective. We know that through the next-generation EU fund, we have started the development, and also through Vega E, the development of liquid oxygen methane technologies. What we aim to do is to develop these technological building blocks further with the objective of starting to prepare a next-generation launcher, right? This is something that will likely fly sometime in the 2030s. Again, we live in very long technological cycles. We need to start to think about what the launcher will look like in 2030. We need to start thinking about it today. We have really good ideas of what we want to do.
We hope that the Ministerial Council will support us towards this goal. We need, of course, to secure proper funding to support the exploitation of both Ariane 6, namely for P160 and Vega C. This is very important because we have so many committed orders that we have to deliver on them. As I was saying before on page 28, we have updated this chart. You have seen this chart before. On the left side, you see the growth in defense orders, which tops up now EUR 439 million. In the graph on the right side, you see what is the expected evolution in terms of production volumes. As you can see, there is quite a bit of growth over the next few years, but there is further opportunity for upside. I don't need to explain much about it.
What has happened in the course of the last year or the last six months, even more importantly in the last two months, calls for a very substantial potential upside. On top of which, we have added our effort to penetrate in the U.S., market, as you know, and we have had the first successes. These successes do not represent the full objective that we have in mind, which, if you stretch it to a longer time horizon, is way more ambitious than we have today. What you can see from this graph is that the volumes can grow over the next few years by two or three times with respect to what we are doing today. We need to prepare for this.
In fact, on page 29, we have started over the last few days, really, reflecting on what is happening also not only in the U.S., but also in Europe. As you very well know, the European Commission started to announce the possibility, not certainty, but the possibility of a substantial plan to re-equip Europe with defense capabilities with the order of magnitude of EUR 800 billion. Whether this will materialize or not, whether it will materialize as a smaller number or not, we do not know yet. I guess nobody knows. We have started an exercise to make sure that we can be ready very rapidly to double our defense production capacity initially in case of a demand surge.
Now, this is important because we can leverage the existing assets to do this, to double the capacity much faster than anyone who has to do it from a greenfield, of course. Lots of assets we already have. We can repurpose some of the assets we already have and that we had used in the past. Therefore, we can very rapidly expand the capacity. Of course, to support this action, we think we will have at least three investment sources. On one side, some grants for which, quite frankly, we had already applied for in the course of 2024. Some support will certainly come from the customers. It has traditionally been the case for this type of products. This has been quite rapid as well.
For the rest, I think we will be prepared in case to add a portion of self-funding, given that the magnitude may be quite interesting and remunerative in a way. Now, when you put all of this together, and as I was showing in the graph, we can probably even create the opportunity to multiply by four or even more the production volumes with respect to what we do today, which means essentially quite rebalancing the business portfolio and the business risk across defense and space. We have a lot of stuff in space to come, as you have seen, and more will come with the next Ministerial Conference. A lot in defense and more may come with new plans for demand in defense. Now, looking, of course, this will cover the next few years, not just 2025.
Now, when it comes to 2025 on page 30, we'll be cautious a little bit on the backlog. We think we'll stay pretty much stable. Some increase in backlog, but not necessarily huge. There might be upside if it materializes on defense. At the same time, we will have to crunch a lot of incremental revenues, potentially reaching all the way up to EUR 480 million. That will obviously subtract from the current backlog. Therefore, that's the reason why we think with the backlog we'll stay stable or marginally growing. With EBITDA reported, we plan on growing, I would say, order of magnitude another 15% with respect to 2024. 2024, we closed at EUR 25.8 million EBITDA reported. If we'd be in the middle of the guidance, we'll have a 15% increase.
The net income will not show as big a growth for the reasons I was telling you before because we have, in particular, in 2024 and 2025, a negative impact from taxes with respect to normal, I would say. Something that will soften in 2026 and 2027, but that we will still face in 2025. I wish we would not have it, but unfortunately, taxes you have to pay, I'm told. Therefore, that's what we see for 2025. Our commitment will be, of course, to do our best as we did this year to exceed the guidance on each of these parameters. As we said, beyond 2025, we commit to keeping a very long-term visibility of the business. The backlog, we plan on keeping it high for several years to come. I don't know how much we can guarantee in terms of growth.
This would depend on how business conditions change. We like what we have today, having at least four years' worth of visibility, which, by the way, is the longest visibility we have ever had. We also will increase the responsibility on non-services. We have acquired this new role, but in the course of 2026, 2027, 2028, we will fully exercise our new role and hopefully extract also margin optimizations out of that. That is the goal. In this period, we will consolidate the Vega C flight cadence, making sure that we reach a stable cadence 6 by 2027. That is going to be so important to fulfill existing orders and to have space for additional orders. The new infrastructure we have in Kourou, at the long side, will probably enable us to go beyond six flights per year, maybe all the way to eight.
This will remain to be seen with respect to market conditions and so on. We will continue developments, as I said before. This we have already talked about. Our commitment will stay on improving margins, which we believe is the main goal that we should achieve in the next four to five years. Not everything can happen in a day or in a year, but stay assured that our medium-term commitment is primarily focused on growing margins and earnings. On the defense side, of course, we are in front of an unprecedented demand growth. Luckily, we have the right competencies to deliver against this unprecedented surge in demand. It's a completely new and changing environment, part of which we only partly understand, I would say, especially over the last few months.
I believe you would agree with us that we have done the right move over the last two or three years to position ourselves in defense, not only in Europe, but also in the U.S. I hope you understand today, in 2025, the reason why we started in 2022 to address the U.S., market, because we had kind of spotted that this demand would have come. Now, you see that the company is positioned to get that growth as well. Had we not done that investment back then, we would not be in the position to capture that growth. I believe this is quite important, and I hope it will be appreciated by shareholders and investors in general. With this, I thank you very much for your attention, and I return the word to Nevio.
Thank you, Giulio Ranzo . Thank you for your attention. We now can answer two of your questions.
Thank you. This is the CrossCo Conference Operator. We will now begin the question and answer session. To enter the Q4 questions, please click on the Q&A icon on the left side of your screen and then press the raise your hand button. Please do not mute your microphone locally. When announced, make sure you turn on your webcam in the pop-up window. If you're on the phone instead, please press star and one on your keypad. The first question is from Andrea Bonfa, Across. Please go ahead.
Hello. Good evening to everybody. Very quickly, going back to the interesting slide on page 29 on the right-hand side, that upside is apparently related only to European upside. It does not include the U.S., upside. That's my first question. The second one, as far as the backlog is concerned on defense, does that include the, let's say, the initial order from Raytheon and the U.S. Army, or is that included in development or does it include anything from the U.S., as of today? The third one, I will come back, I mean, for me, the upside on defense is really clear. I think that the latest geopolitical events suggest also there is potential in the medium-long term, a massive opportunity in creating a constellation of satellites like the Starlink, as Europe currently is not strategically independent on that front.
I was wondering if you can comment on that in the sense that how much capacity would be needed in terms of Vega C and Vega E Ariane in order to create a semi-equivalent Starlink network. For what I know, it seems that the Vega C is the best, let's say, rocket in order to launch a low-orbit satellite. I want to know if that is correct or if I'm wrong, or it's absolutely neutral between which booster to use, Vega or Ariane. Thank you very much.
Andrea, thank you for your question. First of all, on page 29, let me make a step back. You remember when we announced in the course of 2024 the contracts we had obtained in the U.S., we also announced that we were looking for a location to build a factory to manufacture solid rocket motors in the U.S. We are actively pursuing that effort as well. As soon as we will have secured larger contracts with customers, we will become more serious on that project because, namely, we will have so much demand, hopefully, from the U.S., that we will be unable to do this in Europe. On one side, for logistical reasons. On the other side, for regulatory reasons connected to security and so on. On the other side, because of customer expectations, right?
That is one part of how we expect to address the expectation for defense demand growth. Page 29 has to do with a much more recent set of happenings. As you have seen in the course of the last few weeks, there is likely the possibility that Europe—possibility, which is not certainty, right? It may as well not be true. I do not know. There is the possibility that the growth in defense demand in Europe will be much higher than what we had anticipated. We already have, for the projections we have provided to you, growth over the next few years and substantial growth. Unfortunately, if this—or fortunately, should this plan for rearming Europe or however you want to call it, should this go live, then there will be even more.
I believe it is for us mandatory that we stand ready to react to this demand. If it does not materialize, it does not materialize, and we will not invest. We have done an exercise to see what we should do in Europe for Europe, okay? What we have asked in page 29 is primarily devoted to securing that we may have additional capacity in Europe for European products. Most of the U.S., products will be manufactured in the United States. There is also the possibility that some products, some U.S., products, we will manufacture in Colleferro. I would say at least one of the products we have already contracted will probably be manufactured in Colleferro.
When you put this all together, I think that this exercise we have done explains that we do not have very big limitations in terms of growing our capacity. This is what I wanted to convey. Whatever the mix of products or whatever the demand, we can even multiply by four the volumes that we are doing today, okay, with relatively small investments. Why? Because we are already acting on an existing infrastructure that is already quite well equipped. Of course, if you want to do four times the volumes, you need more tooling. You need to repurpose some buildings. You need to change some equipment to add, for sure. It is an efficient set of investments that will also address technology improvements, efficiency, and modernity in a way, right? That is the thing.
We need to be prepared to address demand both in the U.S., and in Europe. I think we know where to go to do that.
The next question.
No, no. Just say I need to finish. I understand the question on constellation, the story of Raytheon. I need to clarify. Constellations. Look, it's a long story there. Starlink in Europe, I don't know. I have no idea. I have not seen, to my knowledge, anyone in Europe capable of launching a constellation of that magnitude measured in terms of tons of objects to be launched to space. There is a very clear possibility, very concrete, actually, that smaller constellations will be launched in Europe, namely, for example, IS-2, for which we are obviously positioning ourselves to get at least a share of the launches and so on. A part of those may also be performed by Ariane 6, which turns out to be good for us as well because we deliver solid rocket motors for Ariane 6.
One way or another, I think we will be in the game with IS-2. There are other things happening as well. I mean, if you look at the announcements we saw from Leonardo just a few days ago, there is the possibility that in Europe, a new Earth observation constellation will be launched. That is with characteristics that I would expect Vega C to be very ready to launch. Of course, we will convince our partners in Italy that it might be a smart idea to launch them with Vega C, for sure. We also have to, by the way, execute in delivering the launches of the Iridè constellation in Italy, Earth observation constellation. All these things are already in pipeline. Now, if you are talking about a massive Telegon constellation in Europe, my honest answer is I don't know.
We will see what happens, whether there is an equivalent of Starlink. I honestly don't know. What was the last question, Raytheon? Raytheon in backlog.
Raytheon, how big is Raytheon in backlog? This we cannot say. Unfortunately, we are not authorized. As we explained to you earlier last year, some of these programs are completely covered by security confidentiality. We cannot talk specifically about the volumes, the pricing, the values, pretty much nothing. That is why we have very, very simple statements and so on. This is not because we do not want to be transparent, but we are not entitled to share this information. Next.
The next question is from Martino Deambroggi of Equita.
Yeah. Can you hear me?
Yes. Yes.
Yes.
I'm clear.
Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, everybody. My first question is on the defense propulsion. First of all, what is the current capacity and utilization? You mentioned you want to double the capacity in Italy, and you split between RENS, customer support, and CapEx. You also added that the CapEx needed for you is not a big number. Just to have an idea of what is needed to double capacity in Italy. Still on this subject, is there any, I suppose no, but just to double-check, is there any supply chain issue to be managed in order to, based on the strong growth in volumes? This is my first question.
Let me start from the last question, actually. First of all, in the production of solid rocket motors in Europe, we do not have substantial supply chain issues because, as you know, you have also visited the plant. We are quite vertically integrated. I mean, we manufacture even our own materials. We do not expect to face significant supply chain issues. That said, we can always improve it. We can improve it from an efficiency point of view, cost, and so on. Hopefully, on larger volumes, it will be easier to manage this type of efficiency. Second point, today, we are manufacturing about 230 solid rocket motors, of course, of different sizes and so on. We currently do not have any problem to reach all the way to 460 or 500 motors per year with the current installed capacity, okay?
What we are conveying is that we can go from 500, 600 to 1,000 or 1,200 motors per year. This is what we can do with the incremental plan. How much would the incremental plan cost in terms of CapEx? A few tens of millions, okay? Be careful. This stuff is typically covered to a good extent by the customers themselves in their interest to secure that you have the right product-specific equipment to manufacture their products. In part, it is covered by grants that we have already applied for, and you may be familiar with, given the low-808 experience you have and such. In part, if needed, we will cover through our CapEx in a small portion. Should there be such a growth in demand, I think we do not want to have the problem of expensing some more capital expenditure for that.
All of this, we do not know. This is completely uncertain at the moment, maybe speculative. I do not know. I think it is serious for us to be prepared for this scenario should this scenario turn out to be true. If I look at the past, I think we had spotted this defense demand growth, and we were right. We were not caught by surprise, as you very well see. Now there is a huge growth in demand, and we are prepared. All we have to do is prepare ourselves ahead of time.
Okay. I understand you are studying it, but is it something that could materialize at the start of this doubling capacity in 2025, 2026, or takes longer?
I think nobody knows, but I very much think that the incremental orders can very well start already in 2025. As I understand, institutions in Europe call for a very rapid action on this front, not something to distribute in the course of the next 10 years. Now, whether Europe delivers on this or not, I honestly don't know. Probably nobody knows. My perception, if I need to place a bet on it, is that we might see a further surge in demand already starting from 2025. As always, we come from incremental backlog, okay?
Martino, this is Alessandro speaking. This defense propulsion increase should unlock economic scale in 2025, combined with increase in cadence of Vega and Ariane 6 studios.
The very first sign you will see is if by 2025, we will exceed order backlog, in particular on the defense side. Today, EUR 440 million in defense order backlog. Should we be by end of 2025 at EUR 600 million, it means that we will have had an upside, quite an upside.
Okay. A more general question on the EU investment plan. I imagine it isn't too early, but what's your feeling about the need to increase the launcher capability in Europe in the sense do you feel or do you believe the European Commission will push on the acceleration in order to get new players? Some of them are very early stage, but are already working on it. You will push on Kourou Spaceport, increasing the launcher's capacity, or maybe a second spaceport in another place. Is there any plan that you feel will be with a strong impact on the sector in one sense or the other one?
I believe demand in terms of satellites to be launched is growing in Europe, no doubt. Even in our segment, in the Earth observation segment, demand is definitely growing. There is one other mission from the European Commission. We had a recent discussion, all of the industry leaders with the new Commissioner, Kubilius. You know that now the European Commission combines defense and space. There is interest to do more in satellite launch. There will for sure be more opportunity than in the past. At the same time, Europe has decided to promote more competition among also the new players. The new players still need to prove themselves, but there is a possibility that someone will show up and that we will have to share the pile with. At the same time, the new players will have to demonstrate that we have comparable capacities to us.
Because one thing is demonstrating that you can lift a small rocket to space, and one thing is demonstrating, as I was telling you, 2.3 tons, for example, in SSO. I think we have quite an advantage because we have experience, we have demonstrated capability, and we have a payload performance that is quite unique in Europe for Earth observation. I think we are optimally positioned. For sure, we are going towards a more competitive market even within Europe. That said, even the export market is growing a lot. Now that we are entering Vega C commercial operations, we are flooded with requests from the Middle East, from the Far East, of opportunities of things that need to be launched. I would think there is any country in the Middle East that wants to have its Earth observation constellation.
A few years ago, you used to have some countries like Morocco willing to launch two satellites, and we did for them. Now the ambition of countries like Emirates, Saudi, Oman, and so on is to launch several satellites to have their own constellations and so on. We will see if they achieve this dream, but we see the commercial pipeline filled with a lot of opportunities. There definitely is the opportunity to grow in cadence. Now, the point would be to balance the volume also with the price. We need to make sure that if we get—I am not crazy about raising the flight cadence unless it leads to an interesting pricing. I just do not want to increase the flight rate for the fun of increasing the flight rate. If the price is good, good. Otherwise, we need to improve the margin, the profit.
We do what we can to balance these things out.
Okay. Thank you, Giulio Ranzo .
The next question is from Bruno Permutti of Intesa Sanp aolo.
Thank you. Good evening, everyone. My question relates to the margins. I would like to understand what—if we look at the guidance you gave, we see that the EBITDA at the middle of the guidance range should be at 6.5% in terms of margin. I was wondering how we can assume the evolution of the marginality of the group will be in the coming year. I mean, what could be a reasonable long-term target that if you have something in mind, also assuming that the defense business will increase its weight. If I have well understood, the profitability should be higher for that business compared to aerospace. If I may, also a question related to the technology. I am not an expert of defense, but I was wondering if there could be some alternative technologies to the classic defense missiles that you produce.
I refer in particular to lasers, things like that. If that is something that could be perhaps something that could develop in the next few years, or if not. Above all, if the target in terms of defense could be the same as the current defense missiles, or if it is a completely different story. These are the two main. Yeah.
First of all, on profitability. I would start from a disclaimer, first of all. When we look at EBITDA reported, you need to keep in mind that today, within the EBITDA reported, we also account for the cost of our U.S. operations, which for the time being is not yet generating incremental profits, right? It's a long-term commitment. We had reported those in the non-recurring costs for a while. Now they are in EBITDA reported. So the EBITDA reported has a charge of EUR 4 million-EUR 5 million of costs that we are incurring, but that we need in order for us to develop the U.S., business, right? That's one point. Now, when the U.S., business picks up, which is probably around 2028, that will be offset. These costs will be fully offset by the profit we generate with the U.S. business, right?
That will tend to already improve the profitability by 1.5 percentage points. Because today, out of EUR 30 million worth of EBITDA reported, you lose 1.5% because you have a charge for an investment, realistically, that you are making on the U.S., business. The second aspect is, in the course of the next five years, we'll change the mix of the business because although space will continue to grow, defense will grow faster. Defense for us has a higher average margin than space. That is due to the fact that our content in the delivery of the product is way higher when we deliver motors, such as for defense, than when we deliver the entire launcher because we have so many external suppliers.
The change in the mix of the business as we go towards 2030, so to speak, you have seen that defense used to be 3% of the business. It's 20% today. Maybe by the end of the decade, it will be 40%. The change in the mix of the business will help improve probably 1 to 2 percentage points in the margin. The rest is what Alessandro was saying before. We will also have maybe another 1.5 percentage point that we can improve due to operating leverage because overall, the business will be larger, okay? Relative to non-recurring costs, I hope at some point we will stop having non-recurring costs and we go back to normal where, as you remember, maybe in 2018, 2019, we had very small non-recurring costs, and this led to much better margins.
Overall, I think we have several ways to improve the margin in the next few years. Already, from last year to this year, we improved the margin, the EBITDA margin, like for like, let's say. We will improve by 0.7-0.8 from 2024 to 2025, and we shall continue to do that even more rapidly in the years to come.
Yeah. Definitely, in the medium term, the CapEx will be lower than the increase in production. We will have a better result in operating leverage and economies of scale. The CapEx that we are now incurring are also a significant portion is devoted to improvement projects, artificial intelligence, to better increase the efficiency of production processes. These two factors should help EBITDA reporting margin in the medium term.
Okay. Thank you. If I may, on this point, for the CapEx for 2025, you can give us guidance.
Hopefully, it will be less than we have incurred in 2024. Also, on this, there is the unfriendly fact that we have this IFRS 16 that is making things difficult to understand because IFRS 16 is not really a cash-out, but shows us CapEx. The target for 2025 is to slightly decrease the overall CapEx expense and to decrease it even further in 2026, 2027, 2028. Because, as Alessandro was saying, we will have completed certain major investments, such as the introduction of a completely new digital infrastructure to support engineering operations, which we have started a number of years ago. This forms the basis to be able to use artificial intelligence to improve operations. This has been a long effort. In the course of 2026, I hope it will be over. Therefore, we should not see much of a CapEx on that front.
We expect between now and 2028, the CapEx to go down.
Thank you.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press Q&A on the left bar or raise your hand or press * and one on your telephone. Gentlemen, there are no more questions registered at this time. Excuse me, there is a follow-up question from Martino Deambroggi of Equita.
Yeah. Thank you. On the last point for CapEx declining going ahead, this is true also including the CapEx to double the capacity, as you mentioned, for the propulsion systems.
If we get into a different scenario that we have not yet planned for, we will see and revisit what we need to do with CapEx. So far, CapEx will be decreasing. Now, if we get.
Allora, scusate, c'è un tema anche magari molto U.S. Pure a secondo.
If we get into a different scenario where we have new opportunities that completely change our expectation for volumes, also the revenues will change. Also, the margins will change. We will have to modify also our plan. To be honest with you, I don't know. If nothing changes with respect to our plan, the CapEx will be decreased.
Should we have something disruptive, we will increase the CapEx. In the other case, we will reduce as you said before.
Okay. Clear. Answering to one of the previous questions, you mentioned that maybe I understood. I don't know if it's correct or not. Production for U.S., will start in 2028. Am I wrong?
Hopefully, yes.
Sumiamo, scusami. No, okay. No, no, certo.
Okay.
Allora, vediamo. Sì, quindi saremo parati su un dato 25.
Martino, please, could you mute yourself on your microphone? Thanks.
We need at least three full years to build a plan, okay, at a minimum. More will be needed to fully qualify new production lines and so on. I believe this is understandable. We have started the design. We have conducted accurate search for the right location in the U.S., to make this happen, for the possibility to also find capable people to work for us. Therefore, I expect that the first full year of production may even be 2029, considering that we will take three years to build the plan. The first full year for production may as well be 2029.
Okay. Thank you. Very last on short term. The sales for propulsion system could be triple digit in 2025, I suppose. Looking at the growth in volumes and the growth in sales, it is a nice price/mix effect because if I just divide the sales by the number of missile propulsion systems.
Sorry, Martino, we cannot hear you well because there is another voice in the background.
Yeah, unfortunately, I tried to repeat. If I look at sales for propulsion in 2025, I have an estimate around EUR 100 million. Looking back to the past couple of years, there is also quite a nice effect in terms of mix or price because the average value for propulsion systems seems to be much higher. Could you just elaborate? Is it just a matter of mix or is there a nice effect in price?
Look, as propulsion revenues reached EUR 70 million in 2024, in the next few years, this number will grow for sure. When you compare that to the overall revenues, they will represent a much larger proportion of overall revenues. Now, no other revenue within our business mix has nearly the same audio content, okay? Which means that in what we do for defense motors, we are automatically generating more margin, but not because of anything, but the fact that we have more work content, okay? When we reach something like 30% defense, 70% space, for sure, we should have a higher average margin, okay? Of course, as soon as we are 40% defense, it would be even better. As Alessandro said, at some point, also the overall volume of activity of the whole company will be larger, and we will better distribute our fixed costs in general.
Okay. Thank you.