Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our full year 2020 results presentation. I'm Valeria Ricciotti, Head of Investor Relations and Credit Rating Agencies. Today, I'm joined by our CEO, Alessandro Profumo, who will cover our business performance and strategic progress. Valerio Cioffi, Leonardo's General Manager, will cover areas relating to industrial performance. Lastly, our CFO, Alessandra Genco, will take you through our full year financial results, our ESG achievements, and the outlook for 2021. Then, we'll welcome your questions. Please note that after the last pre-recorded video, you can also access a link to take part in a virtual tour, including a showroom of 16 of Leonardo's important products. Before I hand you over to our CEO, we just want to start by showing you a very short video highlighting the response made by Leonardo and our colleagues to the pandemic challenges. Thank you.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us at our full year results presentation. The video just now gives you a good sense of how Leonardo has been responding to the pandemic over the last year. I'm proud of the efforts of our many people and all their work to support not just our customer, but also the countries and communities in which we are represented. These efforts are a key driver behind our 2020 full year results and our key messages today. First, we have successfully steered and navigated the group through 2020 in this challenging environment. We did this with a strong, solid, and resilient business performance. We have a strong military governmental business, and we delivered on fourth quarter as we said we would.
We have demonstrated commercial and operational robustness, combined with strong relationship with domestic customers, and we are optimizing the portfolio for growth in our core business. While COVID may have changed the environment, it has not changed our strategic plan, Be Tomorrow 2030. We are setting the business up for long-term success. We have the right strategy and continue to execute it, and we continue to make strategic progress. At the same time, we are taking actions to address issues where we are exposed to civil markets. We are also ready to catch up new opportunities as we have capabilities and clear projects to support the recovery in Italy and across Europe after the pandemic. Looking forward, our strong foundations and core fundamentals give us firm confidence in both the short-term and the medium/longer term. Let me show you in more detail.
We successfully navigated a very challenging year. We reacted promptly and effectively to changing market dynamics. We ensured business continuity while protecting our people and supporting institutions, our customers, and our suppliers. We remain commercially strong. We have continued strong order intake and key top-line momentum, onboarding new orders for EUR 13.8 billion in 2020, at the same pace as pre-COVID. We have a solid backlog of EUR 35.5 billion, even higher if we include the so-called soft backlog and balanced across geographies. We expect to increase this commercial momentum. We are targeting a cumulative order intake of some EUR 80 billion over the next five years. We achieved revenues of EUR 13.4 billion, of which 83% were in military governmental business.
Despite the major challenges of the pandemic, we deliver EBITA of EUR 938 million, with Group solid return on sales at 7% in 2020 and close to 8% if we exclude pass-through activities. We are also delivering a significant return on invested capital, above 11% in 2020. This metric better represents our efforts as the return on sales reflects mix impacts and pass-through activities. As you know, for us, it is strategically very important to win more roles as prime, this can be dilutive to profitability. Looking forward, we are targeting a return on invested capital of circa 14% in 2023. We also deliver in 2020, Group Free Operating Cash Flow positive of EUR 40 million, which was a very strong performance with a record cash generation of EUR 2.6 billion in fourth quarter. When you consider the increased pressure on our businesses exposed to civil aeronautics.
The Aerostructures business absorbed more than EUR 300 million of Free Operating Cash Flow during the year. At the same time, we have also strong liquidity and financial flexibility. We have no need for additional liquidity, no need to raise capital, and no refinancing need until 2022. Alessandra will talk later about the importance of ESG and how it enhance our future performance. The key messages I want to get across here are, our ESG vision is now embedded across all our businesses and our ecosystem. We are upping the pace of investing in ESG as it is already making us more effective. We are already seeing tangible returns for all stakeholders, plus more to come in the future. We set ourselves targets in 2018, we have now met them, we have achieved important recognition from third parties.
Our response to COVID was quick and effective. We put in place actions to get back to adequate levels of productivity, and these actions deliver results and the operational machine responded very well. With industrial efficiency back to normal levels, productive hours recover shortfalls, they were down 15% in first quarter, while at the full year they were down only 10%. Our cost savings measure achieved results exceeding our targets. We targeted around EUR 450 million savings at year-end in controllable cost, plus labor cost, and we delivered more than EUR 500 million. We significantly reduced net investment by EUR 425 million compared to 2020 budget, helped by a high level of government grant purchase. We are also moving to improve efficiency and address the areas affecting our performance, and especially the structural issues, mainly in our businesses exposed to civil aeronautics that have impacted our profitability and cash flow.
We are developing a clear path to address issues in the medium long term and mitigate effects in the short term. In Aerostructures, we are being proactive in our approach. We need to be realistic and recognize that due to COVID-19, our original restructuring plan working towards breakeven this year is not achievable. As you will hear later from Valerio, we are taking actions. First of all, to rationalize industrial sites, programs, to increase efficiency and flexibility. Secondly, to right-size headcounts by around 1,000 people. Valerio will also explain that in ATR, we are developing industrial efficiency plans, the nature of the challenges is different. 70%, 80% of our fleet here is operating. We want to position this business in the right way for the recovery, which we expect, and to reinforce its market leadership, while we acknowledge major market headwinds.
We are also working on Electronics, where we have a two-year deployment plan to reduce sites in Italy by 11 as enabler for future efficiency measures. Lastly, we are looking at future options for the automation business. Our 2020 results are showing we are on the right path, and while COVID may have changed the environment, it has not changed our strategic plan, Be Tomorrow 2030. We continue to make strategic progress growing in our core business. You will recently have seen evidence of this. First, the purchase of Kopter is a good example of strengthening the core. It was an important strategic acquisition, entering a new helicopter segment, opening new market opportunities, new competencies, boosting future developments towards more disruptive technologies, including innovative hybrid electrical propulsion solution. We have announced the IPO of a minority stake in DRS.
DRS is expected to further strengthen its performance as it transitions its programs from development to production stage. We believe this transaction will allow the financial markets to better assess the embedded value of DRS within our portfolio, and we intend to retain a majority shareholding and maintain a significant exposure in this strategically important market, fully consistent with our strategy. We also have the strategic priority, leveraging on innovation. We aim to be at the forefront of innovation with Leonardo Labs, the new research and development laboratories focused on innovation in our traditional sectors and the development of new long-term technologies. The high performance computer, davinci-1, which will accelerate disruptive technologies and key enablers to drive future capabilities such as big data, cloud, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and simulation.
We aim to enhance our core capabilities across divisions, aircraft, helicopters, radar, sensor, and command and control. We are also seeing other new opportunities post-COVID. This has strategic significance for Leonardo going forward over the medium term. Important points to say here, we have key existing capabilities that can play a big role in the Italian national recovery. We can help in digitalization the country. For example, our secure cloud computing platform can become the primary tool for modernizing and boosting national recovery. We believe these projects will be valuable for the long-term growth of Italy and other countries, with Leonardo also being a key partner in great translation. We see a strong drive for innovation in cross-technological domains. All this make us look forward positively. Before I hand over, I want to emphasize my strong confidence in our core business fundamentals, well-positioned for the medium long term.
Our core businesses are delivering well with resilient military governmental in good shape. We are addressing short-term challenges. Our 2021 guidance is robust and orders and revenues, with a solid underpinning of EBITDA and Free Operating Cash Flow, despite the pressure of civil aeronautics. We have new opportunities post-COVID, leveraging existing transversal capabilities. I'm confident in the medium-term outlook, and it's important to continue to invest for the long term. Today, we will also show how important ESG is in our business. It is integral to our success and enables us to deliver on our targets. Thank you. Now I want to hand over to Valerio.
Good morning. I am Valerio Cioffi, General Manager of Leonardo and former managing director of the Aircraft Division. I want to share with you today my mission in this new role and the key priorities I am currently focused on. My main focus is on four principal areas. First, streamlining and optimizing processes by specific new initiative devoted to corporate cost efficiencies and by more efficient and effective procurement operation and program management processes, increasing flexibility and agility. Secondly, reinforcing progress on our growth-led strategy, focusing on commercial opportunities, including training and customer support, managing strategic campaigns, and being side by side with customers for creating additional opportunities in our core businesses. Thirdly, my current top priority, civil aeronautics, which has been strongly impacted by COVID-19. Addressing head on the issues that Aerostructures and ATR are facing and securing their future businesses.
Last but not least, focusing on catching new business opportunities, leveraging on our existing asset, capabilities, and technologies to meet current and future new customer needs. Let us take a closer look at these two areas. The current challenges on the civil side post-COVID are clear. Unfortunately, the market for commercial aviation will not recover quickly. Our Aerostructures volumes are largely driven by commercial aviation customer demand. We are being proactive in our approach, and we are planning ahead how best to set up these businesses up for new generation programs, an example being the participation in the new CR929. We are taking advantage of current slowdown as a real opportunity to implement changes, to optimize and reset, reposition ourself. Plans are being put in place.
We have already begun working on our industrial optimum setup, and as a second step, we have evaluated future needs across skill and capabilities, as well as any other reserves which will allow us to recover profitability and cash generation. Therefore, the plan is to overcome these challenges by mitigating short-term effect, we are crossing the bridge, being flexible, optimizing the use of existing facilities to adapt to changing market demand, securing new opportunities to diversify and balance the Aerostructures portfolio, and being prepared for the future, new opportunities in greenfield and new material application leveraging on Leonardo Labs.
We are already addressing issues and taking steps such as announcing a new composite collaboration with Solvay to increase the product flexibility as well as future programs application, making the decision to diversify site production, Eurodrone composite wing in Apulia, and we are about to finalize a new contract set up on the Airbus A220 program. This is one of the best-seller for the single aisle. Despite the COVID crisis, we provide vertical and horizontal stabilizer, and this agreement embodies our full commitment to fix economic and financial performance issues with expected benefit starting from the second half of 2023 and boosting performance and profitability on the program from the beginning of 2024. This will also be supported by rate increases that have already been announced, but we will be taking further action in Aerostructures. We will rationalize industrial site toward programs and technologies.
We continue to increase efficiency and flexibility. We aim to reduce headcount by around 1,000 people through early retirement, NPV positive, for around 500 headcount over the next three year, starting from this year. Upskilling and reskilling competencies, including movement and redeployment within the group. We are working on ways for the retirement of the remaining people to achieve the reduction target and any measure to address issues. However, we need to be realistic and recognize that given the severity of the downturn in many civil programs, our original restructuring plan, working towards breakeven this year, is not achievable. We will update you on the progress of our plans and the expected impact on financial performance of the division when we have more visibility later this year. Now, moving to our ATR. This is a different story.
The turboprop market is expected to recover earlier than the entire civil aeronautics, and 2020, with only 10 deliveries, is expected to be the bottom year. ATR is the most environmentally sustainable regional aircraft, creating value for its users, thanks to its unmatched performances, and we have a clear roadmap in place to reinforce ATR leadership position on the market and build its long-term resiliency. ATR still remains the leader in the regional market, which has shown faster recovery in comparison with any other international service. More than 800 ATR are currently in operation. We achieved six gross orders in a complex 2020 and opened 85 new routes. We have a solid backlog and the first brand-new cargo aircraft have been delivered to FedEx, out of 30 orders with additional 20 options.
We are also putting in place industrial efficiency plan aimed at securing this business for the future, also increasing profitability. Leonardo is also focused on green technologies, leveraging on our new labs to grow up innovative solutions so that we can implement them in our product, including helicopters as well as ATR. Now we move on to new opportunities. As Alessandro said earlier, we are well-positioned to take advantage of post-COVID opportunities in a real changing world. This has strategic significance for Leonardo moving forward over the medium-term. We already have in place key capabilities that can play a major role in Italy's and Europe's recovery post-pandemic. We can see ways of capitalizing our existing core competencies across all our businesses, aircraft, helicopters, electronics, cyber, and space.
Therefore, we will leverage on our asset, like the high-performance computing and the secure private cloud and technologies and capabilities such as predictive simulation, big data management, advanced analytics and artificial intelligence with proprietary algorithms, decisional support tools, command and control system, and cybersecurity. We are setting out five key project areas, all based on digital transformation, where we have what is needed to fulfill the changing needs. Global monitoring, smart cities, health, public administration, logistics. As I said before, we are fully able to meet our clients' need and acquire new opportunities in Italy and in other countries by combining our existing capabilities and investment already in place. Let me spend a few words on global monitoring, which is one of those opportunities on which we are already working on faster.
Our purpose is of supporting gov and non-gov organization in continuously monitoring and securing countries' critical infrastructure, such as railways, roads, bridges, tunnels, distribution networks, electrical and water, and cultural and environmental resources. We have the real opportunity of using our product, like radars and optical sensors on board of satellite and drones, our ability to analyze 3D images and process data through artificial intelligence algorithms on a high proprietary power computing, and our secure communication networks, decision support solution in the field of command and control system in a cyber secure digital environment. These solutions represents new and exciting opportunities of strategic importance for Leonardo. Now, I would like to hand it over to our CFO, Alessandra. Thank you.
Thank you, Valerio. Good morning, everybody. Today, I want to cover our full year 2020 results and 2021 guidance. I also want to talk about an important area for us, ESG, as this year, for the first time, we're publishing an annual integrated report combining both financial statements and ESG reporting, because it has become integral to how we see and run the business. You can see in our full year 2020 results, we delivered on our targets here. We did what we said we would do with a solid and resilient financial performance, showing a robust response to COVID-19 and a successful execution through the important Q4 of last year. This all meant we ended the year strongly as a result of a very solid performance in the military and governmental business and measures taken to limit COVID effects on results, while the civil business remained soft.
We delivered in line with our expectations. We continue to perform well commercially with strong order intake of EUR 13.8 billion, onboarding new orders at the same rate as pre-COVID. Top line revenues were resilient at EUR 13.4 billion, EBITA at EUR 938 million, with a solid performance in our main businesses and cost savings offsetting a worsening civil market in our joint ventures. We delivered record Q4 cash generation, which enabled us to be slightly cash positive for the full year at EUR 40 million. We have also maintained strong liquidity and financial flexibility. We saw important achievements in 2020 in ESG. We were ranked first in Transparency International's Defense Company Index. We were confirmed industry leader in aerospace and defense of the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices for the second year in a row, included for the 11th consecutive year.
We were included in the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index by Bloomberg and ranked A score in CDP, in Carbon Disclosure Project. All in all, last year showed robustness and resilience in the business. This provides confidence in how we are seeing the outlook, both in the short term and beyond, and it is reflected in our 2021 guidance. Let's look at the performance last year across the businesses, starting with new order intake. Despite COVID, we achieved another year of continued strong commercial performance. Overall, we again had good order intake at EUR 13.8 billion. It was only slightly down on 2019, with important new domestic governmental contracts mitigating export delays and offsetting lower civil orders. We saw a solid performance in all sectors, confirming the good positioning of our products and solutions in our target markets.
Helicopters performed well, EUR 4.5 billion of new orders, winning key domestic military governmental orders in the U.K., Italy, and the U.S., with the first order for 32 TH-73A helicopters for the U.S. Navy. We also won attractive customer support contracts for the U.K. Merlin fleet as well as for the Italian LUH. We also booked major order for 31 NH90 helicopters for Germany. Defense Electronics Europe also performed well. EUR 4.7 billion of new orders with the contract for the next generation radar for the RAF Typhoons, plus the U.K. Merlin fleet, and others all showing the resilience of the military and governmental side.
DRS also continued to perform well, with new orders of EUR 2.6 billion. Continuing to position well on attractive areas of the DoD procurement, winning additional orders for the MFoCS for the U.S. Army and for CVN 80 and CVN 81 vessels for the U.S. Navy.
Aircraft won EUR 2 billion of new orders, with orders for the German Eurofighter fleet, plus F-35 program orders and other customer support wins. At the same time, you can see the effect of the much tougher civil environment in the reduced level of orders at Aerostructures, down at EUR 581 million. The key point for me is that in overall terms, we have achieved continued strong order intake over the past few years, also in 2020, with a book-to-bill at one. Moving on to revenues. You can see a resilient top-line performance, with revenues down only slightly at EUR 13.4 billion. We managed to achieve higher volumes on military and governmental programs, which offset some slowdown caused by the pandemic and the softer civil side.
Helicopter delivered strong performance, with revenue just under EUR 4 billion, successfully overcoming COVID challenges, which affected growth on the civil side of the business and caused some delays in deliveries. It really showed the key strength of the business in military, governmental, as well as customer support. We increased work on the NH90 Qatar program and the startup of the TH-73A U.S. program. Electronics Europe was slightly down, with revenues of EUR 4.1 billion, leveraging on solid multi-year backlog, with some delays on programs caused by the pandemic. DRS was stable at EUR 2.4 billion. Aircraft grew by 13% to EUR 2.6 billion, driven by the ramp-up in EFA Kuwait. While Aerostructures' revenues fell 27% to EUR 819 million, impacted by the production slowdown on the B787 and ATR. Moving to EBITA, we saw a solid performance in our main businesses, offsetting worsening civil markets and joint ventures.
As you have seen, we reacted promptly to COVID a year ago, despite the consequent impact on efficiencies and slowdown it caused. We kept all our sites open and running. We took effective actions to bring the business back to full operation, we have seen a steady recovery quarter by quarter operationally. We also successfully implemented actions to contain expenses, achieving impressive results, both in cost savings, labor, and controllable ones, well above initial targets. Net investments were also significantly lower, cashing in grants on multi-year programs. This all helped to mitigate and reduce the impact on our business. It meant we still achieved full year 2020 EBITA of EUR 938 million and a return on sales of 7%.
Helicopters' EBITA at EUR 383 million was only down 11% and still made a return on sales of 9.6%, despite lower efficiencies and delays caused by COVID, as well as lower civil demand. It shows the strength of our business mix and effectiveness of actions we took. Electronics Europe EBITA was lower at EUR 360 million. A solid performance in a tough year. Profitability reflecting revenue mix with new programs under development and some increased costs on certain programs in automation. DRS was stable at EUR 177 million. Aircraft confirmed its strong performance, increasing profitability to EUR 355 million, with a return on sales of 13.5%, driven by the ramp-up of production on the major EFA Kuwait program. You can see the impact on the group's profitability from the civil side.
Aerostructures showing a loss of EUR 86 million, which we could only partially offset by cost reductions, and a negative contribution from ATR of some EUR 69 million, reflecting the significantly reduced level of deliveries. 10 deliveries in the full year versus 68 from the previous year. On space, manufacturing suffered from lower revenues and COVID-19 effects, coupled with extra costs on telecom programs, while services performed solidly. Over the year, we successfully put actions in place to cut costs and get back to adequate level of productivity. These actions delivered good results by the end of the year. Productive hours down 10% versus expectations against 13% in the first half. Industrial efficiency back to normal levels. Labor cost savings approximately at EUR 330 million, and controllable cost savings approximately at EUR 210 million, leading to savings of EUR 540 million total above our targets.
Net investment savings amounted to more than EUR 400 million, above target as well. Moving to below the line, EBIT fell from EUR 1.2 billion- EUR 517 million due to the lower EBITA and non-recurring costs of more than EUR 300 million. Let me explain to you these non-recurring costs. These relate mainly to Aerostructures, with a significant non-cash, one-off write-off of the asset base of some civil aeronautics programs to reflect the new production schedule and lower activity. Non-recurring also included costs incurred to comply with government guidelines on COVID measures. Net financial expenses were lower at EUR 264 million. Net income was EUR 243 million. Now, moving on to Free Operating Cash Flow. We deliver a record Q4, meeting our targets. We did what we said we would do.
This enabled us to achieve our full year target of slightly positive cash flow against a very challenging external environment, as you well know. This resilient 2020 performance was driven mainly by strong performance in military and governmental business across divisions, lower net investments also benefit from multi-year government grants cash-ins, and cost saving measures, all of this with the same level of factoring versus 2019. Importantly, the solid business performance across the group offset the drag from Aerostructures. Another feature of our performance last year was that we have maintained a strong liquidity and financial flexibility. We have used our solid credit worthiness, taking out EUR 2 billion of new credit lines in May, taking advantage of market conditions in July to refinance bonds maturing in January of this year, and putting in place EUR 200 million of EIB financing in December.
Our gross debt level reduced in 2020 to EUR 3.6 billion. We have achieved a significant reduction in our cost of funding, which came down from 3.5% in 2019 to 3% in 2020. We expect to be at or below that level for the next few years. We also have maintained and strengthened our liquidity positions. We now have cash availability and credit facilities giving group liquidity of over EUR 5.5 billion. Our existing credit lines amount to EUR 2.7 billion, and we signed a credit line in May that now is equal to EUR 1.25 billion. We have a balanced debt maturity profile, and that all means there are no refinancing needs until 2022. Debt maturities are spread out evenly over the next five years after 2021.
We are true believers in the importance and benefits of ESG. We have been upping the pace and the impact of our ESG focus and its influence and impact right across our business. ESG is at the forefront of our minds. It has been part of our journey for the last 10 years now. From my side as CFO, I see the Leonardo sustainability model based on five capitals. First, of course, the most known capital, the financial capital, then the human capital, which is strategic, the technological capital, which is at the heart of what Leonardo does. The natural capital, which are the natural energy resources we use. Lastly, our social capital, which derives from the collaborative relationships with our supply chain and with the research center and university around the globe.
We nurture every day these five capitals to build value for our shareholders and benefits for our stakeholders. They generate value in the three Ps, people, planet, prosperity. This way of thinking and operating is revolutionizing our everyday working. This all is a serious commitment and investment in ESG, which you will see benefits from growth opportunities, lower volatility, while having a major positive impact on the community and the environment. Key messages on our investments here are we are investing well for the future and for growth. We're focused on the right areas, as you can see on the slide, innovative products meeting customer requirements, positioning on key programs of the future, and enhancing our cross-divisional capabilities to empower our targets. Our current and future level of investment spend is about EUR 600 million-EUR 700 million. This reflects lower level of government grants being received going forward.
Around half of our investment activity is targeted to initiatives that impact on our sustainable development goals. I want to cover our outlook and guidance for the current year. The situation in relation to the pandemic is expected to improve gradually over the course of this year, but there are still high levels of uncertainty in the short term. We expect that 2021 will further demonstrate the resilience of the group, returning to our path of sustainable growth and increased profitability, anchored on our military and governmental business, which is robust and resilient. The civil side is expected to continue to be heavily impacted by the market downturn caused by COVID, with further reduction in volumes in Aerostructures and ATR deliveries still far below their pre-COVID levels.
Our guidance for 2021 assumes a progressive improvement in the global health situation throughout the year, with consequent normalization of market and operating conditions. We are guiding the group key metrics as follows. Continued good commercial momentum, leading to full year order intake of around EUR 14 billion, as we leverage on the strength of our good portfolio of products and solutions. Growing revenues in the range of EUR 13.8 billion-EUR 14.3 billion, mainly driven by military and governmental. EBITA improving to a level in the range of EUR 1.075 billion-EUR 1.125 billion, driven by growing volumes, solid profitability in our main businesses such as aircraft, helicopters, and Electronics, even with higher pass-through activities and the mix of programs under development, offsetting continuing headwinds in our civil Aerostructures.
Group Free Operating Cash Flow of approximately EUR 100 million, being mainly driven by, first, a robust performance in our main businesses, driven by EBITA growth and working capital management. Second, the continuing pressures in civil aeronautics, with Aerostructures expected to absorb EUR 350 million-EUR 400 million of cash flows in 2021. Third, normalization of net investment as receipt of government grants are expected to go back to ordinary levels, and normalization of OpEx, HR, and controllable costs, as some COVID-related savings achieved last year may not be replicated. Lastly, I want to finish by emphasizing the solid group fundamentals you heard earlier about. Our robust business mix, our strong backlog, with continued strong order intake giving confidence we have the right product for the future. The increasing ways we're leveraging technology and innovation across the group. Thank you, and I now look forward to taking your questions.