Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our Q3 nine months 2021 results presentation. I'm Valeria Ricciotti, Head of Investor Relations and Credit Rating Agencies. Today, our CEO, Alessandro Profumo, will take you through our strategic update and progress during the first nine months of this year. Our CFO, Alessandra Genco, will take you through the nine months results and the outlook for the full year 2021. Finally, our Group General Manager, Valerio Cioffi, will provide a more detailed update on our Aerostructures division, and we will then welcome your questions. The live Q&A session will start at 9:00 A.M. CET. I will now hand you over to our CEO.
Thanks, Valeria, and good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us today. We are pleased to report solid third quarter and nine-month results for the group. You will see continued good progress and strong and resilient performance in our military governmental business. This now accounts for 87% of the group revenues so far this year. Here, we continue to perform strongly, both commercially and operationally. Our core military and governmental businesses have not just been recovering after the challenges of 2020, but they are better placed compared to before the pandemic in 2019. More robust and commercially stronger, with higher revenues and profitability, as well as cash flow. This progress has served to more than offset the challenges we have faced on the civil side, especially in Aerostructures, as you know perfectly well.
As we will explain today, we are beginning to see some more positive signs, although these challenges will continue to impact us. Despite the civil pressure, it's important to emphasize that overall, we are on track to deliver our group guidance for the full year. Plus, we continue to make important progresses on our firm commitment to ESG. As you may have seen, we have recently signed our first ESG-linked revolving credit facility. We have been appointed again as Global Compact LEAD, and we have been ranked first in the aerospace defense sector for ESG by Sustainalytics. Our confidence looking forward is underpinned by our strong and positive fundamentals. Solid nine-month results on track with our expectation and above 2019 levels in military governmental.
Our military governmental side was robust and very resilient through 2020, and has continued to be so this year. You can see continued strong commercial performance. We have a very strong backlog, now EUR 35.2 billion, and well-balanced across the group. We have again grown order intake to EUR 9.3 billion, up 9% year-on-year, with a good balance without being reliant on any single jumbo order. It gives both good visibility and confidence in the short-medium term, and this is a key driver of the group's solid results and confirmed growth path, despite the pressure on the civil side. Our group revenues rose to EUR 9.6 billion, up 6% year-on-year. We have strengthened our performance with EBITA of EUR 607 million, up 22% year-on-year.
We have improved profitability across the group, with return on sales now at 6.3% and even higher, 7.3% excluding passthrough. With a return on invested capital higher at 8.5% versus 7% in the nine months last year. As Alessandra will explain shortly, we have achieved an improved and more linear cash flow profile this year for the group. All this progress means we are confirming our full year guidance. We have also continued to show our firm commitment to ESG as a key strategic priority. We made an important announcement last month with the signing of a new revolving credit facility, the first to be ESG-linked. This represents good progress in our commitment to ESG, and it is also a further step forward in the group's disciplined financial strategy.
The new ESG linked revolving credit facility is fully in line with our commitment to sustainability as a basis of Leonardo Industrial Plan. ESG indicators are also in line with our long-term incentive plan. I now want to look at the reason why we have strong confidence in the medium-long-term potential of our main businesses. Our main military governmental businesses continue to go from strength to strength with a confirmed growth path. They proved their resilience and robustness last year. They are now performing strongly on all metrics. In helicopters, we continue to see strong momentum on the military governmental side. We see valuable opportunities also in customer support, both more than offsetting the softer civil side, which will take some time to recover fully, despite the fact that we are seeing very good signals.
We feel positive the dynamics of our helicopter business remain strong. Our exposure to military, governmental, and customer support and training are providing resiliency, flexibility, solidity, and longer term visibility to our results. We are pleased with progress, and expect to be on track for the full year. We have a solid backlog and a world-class product portfolio, and we have a clear technology roadmap looking forward to leverage and build for the future, it has the AW609, and as well, the AWHero, which has been just certified military. Worth mentioning that we received the world's first military certification, as I just said, for a 200 kilos class for our AWHero UAV a few days ago. In electronics, we have strengthened the business. We are seeing attractive long-term opportunities across avionics, land, and naval programs.
We have built a strong order book. We have successfully built key long-term trusted relationship with customer globally. We are well-positioned on key international programs. Commercial activity has been very strong, winning good business to add to our backlog. We have seen a good step up in both orders, revenues, EBITDA, and profitability. There are good reason to be positive looking further forward. We can see longevity in our EFA-related activities as the aircraft looks set to fly until 2050, with continued investment ahead of then for new equipment. We are seeing the development of the Tempest program. This is giving us the kind of real long-term visibility greater than we have ever seen. While in Leonardo DRS, our U.S. defense electronics business, also continues its growth path.
With a strong backlog, very well positioned on key DOD priorities, which will drive top line growth going forward, while profitability will benefit as contracts moving from development phase to production, as we are already seeing. Our aircraft division has been a star performer, achieving very strong growth. It has great position on key international program, not just EFA, but also a thriving, growing world-class trainer business. It has best-in-class profitability. All this has more than offset the pressure on our Aerostructures business caused by pandemic. Here, we are proactively addressing challenges and seeing some sign of recovery in specific market segments.
One of our objective today is to give you an update on our Aerostructures division, to give you a greater understanding of the business and how it has been impacted by the pandemic, and the action we have been taking, the positive progress we have been making, and expect to make to reposition as a stronger business for the long term. Valerio Cioffi, our Group General Manager, will give you more detail in a moment, but let me set the scene with some comments. Before the pandemic, we were making good progress with our restructuring plan for Aerostructures, and we were running ahead of schedule, having targeted 2021 and 2022 as breakeven for EBITDA in 2022, 2023 at the cash flow level. In 2020, our restructuring progress was interrupted by the air traffic crisis due to the COVID pandemic.
Our revenue profile was materially affected. The sharp drop in air traffic severely impacted our customers, and in turn, impacted our Aerostructures on revenues and EBITDA, but even more on free operating cash flow, with a cash absorption in 2020 of more than EUR 300 million. We are seeing positive sign of market recovery in specific segments. The outlook is improving positively for ATR, and it is expected to reach 50-60 production rate in medium-term horizon. We are also investing in new version, in cargo, and in sustainable aircraft fuel there. While Airbus and other programs are growing, and we see stable military activity. The B787 is expected to improve, although it has lower pace in short-term, and it is expected to become profitable from shipset 1406.
These effects are included into our plan. We put in place actions to increase our industrial efficiency and flexibility to mitigate and reduce losses in the short and medium term, and to secure Aerostructures longer-term future. We are upskilling and reskilling resources. We are investing in digitization, applying World Class Manufacturing, and we expect to be paperless in specific activities by year-end. Based on the current assumptions, in Aerostructures, we confirm that 2021 will be the bottom year with an expected cash absorption of EUR 350-EUR 400 million. We see a gradual recovery of the economic and financial performance over the next years, and we expect to become profitable at the end of 2025. We confirm around EUR 3 billion cash generation for the group over the plan horizon, considering Aerostructures.
Also, you will see from Valerio later, we are doing all we can, and our recovery path has already started. First, I hand over to Alessandra to give you more details on our nine-month results. Many thanks.
Thank you, Alessandro, and good morning, everybody. Let me now run through our nine-month results. You can see in the numbers a solid performance by the group with the much larger part of the group, the robust military and governmental side, showing very good performance and growth, and ahead of pre-pandemic levels, more than offsetting the softer civil side, meaning that we are on track for our full-year expectations. I want to start with the key results highlights now. Our commercial performance has been very strong. We continue to see good demand for our products, and it's driving higher volumes and a growing top line. We achieved order intake of EUR 9.3 billion, up 9%. We grew group revenues to EUR 9.6 billion, up 6%.
Our book-to-bill is around one time, and our backlog now stands at almost EUR 35.2 billion, covering 2.5 years of equivalent production. In operational industrial terms, we have seen improved performance in all our businesses and growing profitability, except in Aerostructures, where you will hear we are doing all we can to mitigate its impact on the group. Despite this, we improved group EBITA to 607 million, up 22%. This year we have achieved an improving and much more linear cash flow profile, with cash outflows at the nine-month stage this year reduced to EUR 1.4 billion, more in line with the usual seasonality. Our liquidity position remains strong, and we have signed our first ESG-linked revolving credit facility. We're confirming our full year 2021 guidance.
Let me talk to you through the key metrics, starting with key orders across the group. Order intake performed well. In fact, we had commercial activity that was higher than pre-pandemic levels at EUR 9.3 billion, up 9% year-over-year, and that's without any large jumbo orders. Last year in 2020, the big highlight was helicopters, which had a particularly strong performance, mainly thanks to the IOS contract in the U.K. This year, helicopters still achieved good order intake of EUR 2.4 billion, again, driven by higher domestic military and governmental and customer support orders, such as orders for 36 TH-73 for the U.S. Navy and the follow-on tranche of the LUH helicopter for the Italian Army.
I also want to mention nine AW139 for Saudi Arabia, for the Saudi Royal Court, and eight AW139 for the Italian Guardia di Finanza. Helicopters continue to show its resilience and commercial stability. This year, order intake may be more phased in Q4, but it remains on track for our full year expectations. Electronics Europe saw a big step up in its new order intake. It achieved new orders of EUR 3.9 billion, up 72% year-on-year. Let me just mention the EFA Germany contract and the equipment for two U212 near future submarines. While DRS continued its strong and stable commercial performance with new orders of EUR 1.6 billion.
Aircraft's order intake also saw a big step up, more than doubling to EUR 1.6 billion in the first nine months, with very strong commercial momentum, winning new orders in growing trainers business. In Aerostructures, we saw the effects of a different order pattern by our customers, also reflecting the civil market environment. Order intake fell to EUR 300 million. We are seeing orders covering shorter time horizons, but overall, a strong group commercial performance, and we are again seeing a pipeline of demand and opportunities that gives us confidence in our full year targets. Moving on to revenues. In the first nine months, as you have seen, revenues increased to EUR 9.6 billion, up 6% year-on-year. We grew our top line in all our businesses, except in Aerostructures.
Helicopter revenues of EUR 2.7 billion were up nearly 3% as we ramped up activities on military and governmental contracts with good contributions from customer support, NH90 Qatar, and the Navy trainer in the US. Electronics Europe performed strongly with revenues up 10.7% at EUR 3 billion, thanks to its strong backlog. DRS revenues were up 6.9% in dollar terms, confirming its growth path. Aircraft stepped up revenues to EUR 2.1 billion, an increase of 24% with the ramp-up of major EFA Kuwait contract and M-346 trainers. In Aerostructures, revenues fell to EUR 905 million, in line with our expectations, primarily because of production slowdowns in B787 and ATR. Overall, a strong performance, and notably, our main military governmental businesses are achieving higher levels and revenues than before the pandemic. Next, our EBITA and profitability performance.
Here we have been successful improving with EBITA up 22% to EUR 607 million, and profitability reaching 6.3%. It's a strong group performance, especially in the context of losses in Aerostructures, and it is in line with our expectations. It reflects growing volumes across military and governmental, growth in our customer support and training activities, and improved performance in our joint ventures, as well as reduced impact from COVID. You can see this across the businesses. Helicopters maintained a stable level of EBITA and profitability on the back of higher volumes, but a changing mix with an element of passthrough leading to EBITA of EUR 223 million and the return on sales of 8.2%.
Defence Electronics Europe impressively stepped up EBITA to EUR 281 million, a substantial increase of 30%, reflecting higher volumes and translating into an improved profitability. DRS delivered EBITA of EUR 144 million and improved margins thanks to the expected transitions in programs from development to production phase. Aerostructures grew EBITA to EUR 241 million, an increase year-on-year of 18%, driven by higher volumes and including some changing mix and passthrough effects. On the civil side, Aerostructures losses increased as expected to EUR 125 million because of lower volumes and lower asset utilization. Elsewhere on the civil side, we saw a much reduced level of loss from our ATR joint venture as our restructuring actions produced benefit and we increased the level of deliveries.
In the first nine months of this year, ATR delivered 16 aircraft versus 10 in the whole 2020 when they were the only producer in the regional market to make deliveries. We are pleased with progress at ATR, and they are on track to more than double, almost triple, their level of deliveries in 2021. Our space joint ventures made a materially improved contribution of EUR 37 million. Last year, we were mainly impacted on the manufacturing side, but this year, manufacturing is recovering and the space service business continues to be resilient and stable. Now, moving to the below the line items, you can see that in the first nine months, EBIT increased to EUR 445 million, reflecting the increase in EBITA and the EUR 90 million restructuring cost for the early retirement of Aerostructures workforce, as per agreement signed with the unions last July.
Our net result reflect their EBITA performance together with lower financial expenses at EUR 132 million and lower impact from FX hedging activity. We are pleased with our progress on cash flow. It is improving in line with our plans. We're achieving a more linear profile throughout the year, and we are on track with our full year target. We also maintain a very strong liquidity position at around EUR 3.6 billion. We have multiple sources of liquidity which we can use to meet our financing needs, which means that we have a solid financial position, no refinancing needs in the short term, and no need to raise capital. As you have heard earlier from Alessandro, we signed a EUR 2.4 billion revolving credit facility, ESG-linked.
It is divided into two tranches, and it replaces the existing RCF, reducing our overall cost of funding and extending the maturity until 2026. Under this facility, if we achieve certain targets, we will activate a margin adjustment mechanism applied to the facility. These targets include the reduction of CO2 emissions and the promotion of women employment with degrees in STEM disciplines. This reflects our confidence in the group's sustainable strategy, part of Leonardo's path for the integration of economic and financial data with ESG targets, and in line with our commitment to integrate SDG into our finance strategy, with the SDGs being the basis of circa half, 50% of the group's investments. I want to close by covering our outlook and guidance for the full year. Our results for the group for the first nine months are solid and in line with our expectations.
You can see the larger part of our group, our military governmental business, continues to be robust and resilient, improving its performance and back on a growth path and ahead of where it was pre-pandemic. Our Civil side, and mainly Aerostructures, still faces challenges, but its financial impact is in line with our expectations. We see this year as the bottom year, and we have begun to see some positive signs for the future. It all means we can confirm our full-year guidance, and our strong fundamentals gives us confidence in the medium and long term. Let me recap the key takeaway message for our results. We're back on the growth path, with continued strong commercial activity globally building our backlog. Our top line is growing across all sectors, with a robust profitability benefiting from increasing volumes and solid industrial performance.
Cash flow on track, supported by detailed action plan, delivering effects already in the nine months. I will now hand over to Valerio to update you on Civil Aerostructures business. Thank you.
Thank you, Alessandra. I would like to give you a greater understanding of our Aerostructures business and its programs, and how we are repositioning ourselves as a stronger business for the future. As Alessandro said before, we are seeing positive progress and improving outlook in a number of areas. We have worked hard over the last year and this year on restructuring and efficiency actions, and these are helping us to reduce costs and providing benefits. ATR is recovering faster than was expected a few months ago. The regional market is growing faster than long-haul. Cargo is sustaining regional market dynamism, and there are growing longer-term opportunities. Airbus activity is growing and ramping up, and the other programs, including the military side, remain robust and resilient. On these activities, we are confident we are progressing on a clear path where we have a good, viable, and sustainable business.
On the large part of Aerostructures, which is Boeing-related, and in particular, the 787 program, is still challenging, and the related effects are reflected in our plan. Before going into more detail on the main Civil Aerostructures business, I want to start with our ATR joint venture. Besides being an important customer of Aerostructures, ATR is a strategic joint venture of Leonardo. Here, we have also been carrying out actions to secure ATR's future, as well as its recognized leadership position in the regional market. We have been enlarging the product portfolio with the 42 STOL version, ramping up the deliveries of the new cargo version, meeting booming market needs while seeing long-term opportunities. We are excited by the potential of ATR. As an environmentally friendly platform, ATR is the most suitable and sustainable regional aircraft in the market. It's already certified to fly with 50% sustainable aviation fuel.
It's already recognized as the greenest platform, burning up to 40% less fuel and emitting up to 40% less CO2 than its peers. We have accelerated the path to certification for 100% SAF, now expected by 2025. SAF being the most affordable solution in the short term, but Leonardo is also exploring other options such as hybrid-electric configuration. Moreover, in the short term, the good news on ATR is that there are some more positive signs on market recovery. We see 2020 as the bottom year with 10 deliveries, and we now expect to more than double, almost triple deliveries this year, and we see a further material ramp-up starting from 2023. Now, let's take a look at our business more in depth. I want to underline the following key characteristics. Leonardo Aerostructures is a leader in its market.
We manufacture, test, and integrate aluminum alloy and composite structures, components, and parts in both civil and military markets. We are a key partner with the world's major commercial aircraft manufacturers across Europe, U.S., and elsewhere, and we are sustained by strong engineering skills and innovation labs across the group. We are positioned on some of the most important aircraft platforms with a strong and diversified customer base, and these platforms are integral parts of the best aircraft currently in production. The 787 is our largest program, and with Boeing, we have also the 767. We are on the ATR, as I said before, and we have two Airbus main program, the A321 and the A220. We are also involved in a number of military platforms like Eurofighter and F-35, which is attractive business for us.
We are able to leverage off our capabilities and key technology strength to assess further opportunities in similar and future markets. At the same time, Aerostructures is a very long-term business. The business has high fixed cost linked to very long-term programs which limits flexibility, and this is also complexity with limitation in changing the manufacturing footprint, the number of sites, and the program plant allocation. We are also taking the right balance, optimizing skills and people for future volumes recovery. We are confident that we will be stronger and in a better position in the medium to long term. As a background, in order to better understand the Aerostructures journey, I want to show how the business was in the making process before the pandemic. Looking at 2019, revenues were above EUR 1 billion.
787 was the most significant contributor to our revenues, accounting for over 50%, followed by ATR at around 25%. At that time, 787 was producing at a rate of 14 ships per month. As Alessandro said earlier, before the pandemic, we were making progress without a turnaround plan, and we were running ahead of schedule in reducing losses, having targeted 2021, 2022 as breakeven for EBT and 2022, 2023 at cash flow level. In early 2020, our restructuring progress was interrupted by the air traffic crisis due to COVID outbreak. Our revenue profile was severely impacted. The sharp decline in air traffic affected airlines, and in turn impacted our customer and then our business. In 2020, revenues decreased, and in 2021, we expect revenues to fall to around EUR 550 million.
787 volumes decreased materially to around nine ships per month in 2020 and to an average of four ships per month currently. At the same time, production rates of ATR fuselages fell from 65 per year in 2019 to 14 in 2020 and currently stand at around 15. We see 2021 as the bottom year, and we are now seeing more positive signs with an improved outlook in a number of areas. Let's look at our path for recovery, which is based mainly on the following assumptions. ATR, as I said, is recovering faster. Our assumption is that production rates will start increasing from 2022 with the material ramp up from 2023. The industrial production will not follow the market recovery immediately, and we expect ATR production rates to remain low while we reduce the inventory buffer.
However, this year, we expect to more than double, almost triple deliveries compared to last year. We are seeing that Airbus activity is growing and ramping up again, going back and exceeding pre-COVID levels. We are assuming A220 and A321 increasing production rate, and A220 is expected to be profitable from the second half of 2023. We also expect the military side to remain robust and resilient as usual. We expect new programs like EuroMALE and additional work packages in civil and military fields to support our recovery path. Importantly, on 787, we expect to achieve breakeven when we deliver shipset number 1406, and we then benefit from both expected rate profile and pricing per contract. The key issue is volumes and monthly production rates on that program. The 787 remains a highly regarded aircraft.
Airlines are expected to create demand, leading to a ramp up in the future. We do expect these volumes to increase. However, it will take some time, but when they do, we will strongly benefit. All of this will be accelerated by the evident benefits of our industrial action, aimed at improving efficiency and flexibility while creating program diversification. All this means that we currently expect a gradual recovery for Aerostructures, and then improving to reach breakeven at the end of 2025. On the industrial side, we have been acting on all the possible options we have in order to overcome the current scenario. We have achieved important progress in strengthening our key customer relationships. For example, with Airbus, we are now well-placed, having closed the settlement on the A220.
The agreement was signed in the second half of 2021, and it removes annual loss of EUR 35 million, and means we become profitable on this program starting from the second half of 2023. Next, we have launched a plan based on the following three main pillars: cost reduction, innovation and industrial transformation, and flexibility improvement through customer and portfolio diversification. Let's start with the action on cost reduction. We are targeting to mitigate current workload reduction, optimize headcount across the most impacted sites, processes, and programs, drive efficiency improvements by reducing industrial costs. We have signed the agreement with the unions for the early retirement of up to 500 people, and as announced in March, this will be NPV positive.
We have also agreed the upskilling and reskilling for relocating across the group up to 500 additional people, and we are also working with unions to implement furloughs in 2022. On top of this, we launched Leonardo Production System, inspired by World Class Manufacturing and additional programs for green energy in all our sites. All of this will lead to further increases in industrial cost reduction of around 5%-6% per year from 2022 onwards. The innovation and industrial transformation pillar. Our aim has been to renew and transform the Aerostructures industrial production processes with digitalization techniques involving all sites, investing in innovation for efficiency, especially on the ATR and the A220 programs. We have carried out a rigorous production optimization analysis, side by side, making them more solid and sustainable.
Just to give you a few examples, we have re-industrialized ATR, saving 25%-30% production hours per fuselage, and we are now implementing a paperless manufacturing process. By the end of 2021, in all plants. Lastly, we have been taking important actions on flexibility and work diversification. For example, allocating EuroMALE wing fabrication and sub-assembly in Aerostructures division plants, and the contract is expected to be signed by the end of this year. At the same time, we are bidding for additional work packages from existing and new customers, all of which will bring medium- to long-term benefits. We are also continuing to invest in reskilling and upskilling in order to increase our flexibility. This process involves around 3,000 people, while at the same time, respect the need to maintain the right balance to be ready to restart at higher production volumes.
To sum up, we are continuing to invest in the future, further strengthening the position of our Aerostructures business. Regarding all our sites, our key priority has been achieving a more specialized production footprint. This will allow us to achieve a more robust and sustainable performance for the future. Most importantly, on the bottom of the page, our Grottaglie site was designed solely for manufacturing and assembly of 787 sections 44 and 46, with one-piece barrel technology. Here, we will aim to make it a center of excellence for carbon fiber large sections and components, diversifying production through additional programs and new customers also, as I said earlier, in the military field. We are now starting to see the positive impact of the actions taken to address challenges with results already visible this year. There are also positive signals of recovery.
ATR is a leading platform in its segment. It looks set to recover earlier than we expected, and we are expanding its product family to capture new markets with the cargo, with the 42-STOL version. It is well-recognized as the greenest platform with 40% less fuel consumption versus its peer. For Airbus programs, we are expecting a significant ramp-up in production with efficient cost per unit, and we can rely on higher production rates going back or exceeding pre-COVID levels. We are also leveraging on military to address opportunities and relying on strong engineering skills and innovation labs across the entire Leonardo Group. We also expect 787 production to improve, although at a slow rate in the short-term, representing a significant long-term opportunity once recovery gains speed, being a key platform in the long run, with low operating costs.
2021 represents the bottom year, and we feel our recovery path has been already started, and we now see the worst behind us. Thank you.