Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Airbus Business Update 2025. It’s been two years since we met at the occasion of the Paris Air Show. We have a full agenda for today, but before starting, let me tell you how pleased we are to have you with us this morning. At this point, I would like to welcome our connected guests. Thank you for being with us as well. It’s great to have you here. Before I hand over to Guillaume, let me go through some practical information. Starting with safety. We spoke with the hotel manager today, this morning.
There is no fire alarm test planned, so in the unlikely event of a fire alarm, I would ask you to proceed to the emergency exits, signaled in green, and we will gather at the meeting point, which is located on the ground floor, in front of the main entrance on the right-hand side. Now, some practical information. The event will last about four hours, and there will be no break because the agenda is quite dense. You have seen there are cameras, so for your own safety, I would ask you not to stand or walk in front of the cameras. Moving on to our agenda this morning. Our agenda will be split in three parts. We will start with a section on Commercial Aircraft business. We will address the demand, the positioning, and we will address as well the ramp-up.
We will then move to a second section, which will be devoted to our divisions, Airbus Helicopters and Airbus Defence and Space, starting with Airbus Helicopters. We will finish with the last section on the financial perspectives. Between each part, there will be Q&A sessions, so you will have a lot of opportunity to ask questions and to interact with our management. My favorite, please remember that throughout this meeting, we will be making forward-looking statements. I invite you to refer to our Safe Harbor Statement, which you are very well acquainted with and which you can find on our website. That's it on my side. Let's get started. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome on stage the CEO of Airbus, Guillaume Faury.
Thank you, Hélène. I hope you can hear me well. Good morning, everyone. Great pleasure to be with you here today and also online. Plenty of people in the room, so I guess, I hope you've had time to visit the Paris Air Show as well. These are my last weeks as a Chairman of the French Aerospace and Defence Association, and in that capacity, I'm also chairing the Paris Air Show, so I hope you have a good Paris Air Show. You can enjoy all the interactions and the flight display and the static display and meeting with plenty of colleagues from the industry. It's a very active show. As you know, the Paris Air Show is the largest air show in the world.
It's the largest gathering of aerospace and defence companies, actually by far, because the Paris Air Show is more than twice bigger than the second largest air show in the world, we like to say it. That's why we have so many companies, exhibitors. We have 2,400 exhibitors at the show. This year, and I will come back to it, is a bit of a special year in terms of level of activity when it comes to international delegations, military delegations. The formal institutional delegations normally are between 90 to 100. This year, it's 200. We have 200 military delegations, so plenty of activities on that side of the equation. That relates a bit to what I will be saying later on defence and space. You know that we have five days of professional, five professional days and three days for the public.
In total, we expect between 350,000-400,000 visitors. That is one of the reasons why we have this day with you today, this business update. Also, 2025 for us is a bit of a transition year, a pivotal year. It is coming from recovery of COVID, closing and fixing a lot of issues we had to fix. I will explain also where we are on the defence side, on space, transitioning and turning around some of the activities with plenty of opportunities ahead of us. Also, obviously, on helicopters, which is now on a stable and growing trajectory. We have with us Thomas, our CFO, who will be speaking last once the others have set the scene.
We have also, obviously, Christian, the CEO of Airbus Commercial, Bruno, CEO of Helicopters, and Mike, the CEO of Defence and Space, is coming from north of Europe. He took off as early as possible this morning. I think he's about to land in, he has landed in Le Bourget, taking a helicopter to come to the heliport. He has a special treatment today to be here with you at 9:50. We do not want to be too fast because if we're too fast, he will not be with us on time. Anyway, plenty of things to share. We are in front of you today in full swing on our activities. It's a very energetic Paris Air Show as far as we are concerned. Obviously, it started with a very tragic note with the accident of our friends of Air India.
Our thoughts are with the families of the victims. You know that we're working very hard for each and every passenger to land safely at destination. When these things arrive, it's a tragedy for the industry. We are part of the industry. We're working hard for this not to happen. Safety is my chief priority every day, every morning. We have all thoughts with our friends of Air India and India and the U.K. as well because there were plenty of British citizens on board. It started also with the conflict rising between Israel and Iran and another step up of the dimension of the security concerns that we have around the world. It's a growing number of challenges around us. We are in an environment which is fast changing, which is uncertain, which is unstable, and we are operating in that environment.
It's an environment that is full of risks and uncertainties, which is also full of opportunities. We are working hard to make the company resilient, to be prepared to adapt to changes, to risks, to difficulties, but also to grow and to take benefits to support those who are in need of our products and services. Obviously, it's the case in Defence, and I will come back to it a bit more specifically. When it comes to commercial aircraft, which is the bulk of what we're doing from an economic standpoint, we're in the ramp-up. We have sort of turned a corner with the traffic now being significantly stable ahead, higher than what we had pre-COVID. We have put COVID behind us in terms of traffic. It takes more time to ramp up the industry behind, I mean, the manufacturing industry.
You know that we've gone through a lot of difficulties with our supply chain. Here again, Christian and Florent, the Chief Operating Officer of Airbus Commercial, will share with us where we are, the progress we're making. We're making good progress. We have, of course, a number of challenges that we are managing today. We operate in a very challenging trade environment. That's obviously what we are trying to address each and every day. Almost every day comes with different news, different difficulties, different ideas on how to mitigate the situation and move forward. It also comes with challenges linked to the fact that it's a trade war that is triggered in the U.S., that is impacting a lot the U.S., and that presents also some midterm, long-term opportunities for us in the rest of the world, provided we manage that situation.
We believe overall it's bad for business. We believe it's very important to be back to the 1979 agreement of a complete level playing field with zero tariffs for civil aerospace goods. Would it not be the case, we need to be able to navigate and move forward. We are ramping up, as you know, and there will be an update on where we stand. We know that's very important. That's top of your mind on where we are, the progress we're making, and we will reconfirm an important number of assumptions because we think we have our hands on it. When it comes to the global environment, trade is impacting us and plays a big role on how we move forward. Security is another dimension of what we're doing. In security, it's interesting to have a few figures in mind.
Airbus is the top EU company in defence. We are more known for our civil products, for our commercial aircraft, but the turnover, we are the 11th largest defence player in the world. We're not in the top 10. We're not in the top 10 because the amount of money that is spent in Europe for defence is very small compared to the U.S. Roughly, the EU is buying every year 20% of what the U.S. is buying in terms of defence equipment. A majority of what the EU is buying is procured from outside of Europe. We are really at a turning point. We've been speaking in Europe for increasing defence budgets. That's happening now, really. Significantly, we will see things moving forward.
Europe is getting organized on how to spend that money, to spend more money in Europe, buying less from outside of Europe, more from Europe, and buying more smartly, meaning more together. That is where we, as a European defence company, designed to cooperate, to orchestrate cooperations between countries on large systems, I think we have a role to play. We see that bit on military aircraft, bit on what we call connected intelligence, bit on space for defence, on helicopters. We will see opportunities moving forward, and we are preparing ourselves. We are having a lot of dialogue and discussions and conversations at the show and beyond the show on the ramp-up of activities in defence and security. We are in this very moment with a trajectory that is clear, that is resilient on commercial aircraft. We have to navigate the trade and the logistic challenges.
That's what we're doing. Florent will share with you a number of insights. I will share with you where we are on the transition on Defence and Space because we want to capture growth. We want to capture more business, but we need to be with our operations generating profits. We are turning around our space activities. We're fixing programs in space. We're turning around the activity itself. We are working on a more strategic option to bring our activities together with the one of Leonardo and Thales and create critical mass on space in Europe at a moment where the race for innovation calls for major investments. Turning around, sharing with you where we are, that's working.
I like to say that we are doing a bit in Defence and Space in the division, what we have done, what we have launched sort of a decade ago on Helicopters and that is really paying off now, transforming the way we do business, the way we are structured, we are organized, the way we lead the processes and tools that are applied to be an industrial company in products which are complex, sophisticated, and in small numbers, but still can be supported by industrial means and processes. Ultimately, Thomas will be on stage and share with you the equity story and the updated way of looking at the future and the way we look at it. As you have seen also with some adaptation on our dividend policy, Thomas will try to make sense out of it.
Without further ado, and we will have time for Q&A afterwards, I suggest to invite on stage Christian and Florent or Christian first. Christian. Christian. So please, Christian. The floor is yours.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Privileged to be here and give you an update together with my teammate Florent on the, yeah, pretty thrilling world of commercial aircraft in general and at Airbus in particular. Now, our business, of course, is a complex business. It's a wide-ranging business, but we're going to try and summarize it with Florent this morning in a focus on the commercial side of the business and then, of course, the bulk of our engine, which is the operational performance and the ramp-up, as Guillaume said. Where are we in what's our playing field? Our playing field is the global world with its challenges on its globalities.
Fundamentally, ladies and gentlemen, we operate in a pretty fertile garden. I say this because our customer's business, air connectivity, mainly passengers, but also cargo, remains very, very correlated to economic growth and to the demography around the world in a very simplified way. So long as the world population grows and the disposable income of the average individual grows, that individual's propensity to travel by air continues to grow faster than the product of demography and GDP. Now, where do we stand in terms of our global forecast? I say not without a little bit of satisfaction that Airbus's market forecasting has proven extremely, extremely reliable and close to the reality when we look back over the last 30 years or so in which we've published our global market forecast. You see world GDP, we see growing at about 2.5%.
When I say we, it is not Airbus per se, but of course, we inspire ourselves and triangulate a lot of economic data from proven sources around the world. The world population, as I mentioned, demography is going to grow by 1.2 billion people, of which most, or an even higher number, 1.3 billion people will migrate towards urban environments, which of course is where people fly from and fly to. World trade and world GDP are very, very closely aligned here. You can see 2.6% growth on average over the next 20 years for world trade. What's most important, the middle-class people with actually disposable income grows even faster than the world population with 1.5 billion people additional in the middle class. Sorry, I dwell on this a little bit because this is the fundamental soil on which our customers, the airlines, operate.
We still see the same typical correlation in mature economies. We see mature economies in terms of air travel. I mean, the United States, Western Europe, Australia, typically the average citizen per year travels more than twice every year. In the faster growing economies around the world, typically India, but also China or smaller countries like Vietnam, Indonesia, you see an average propensity to travel. India, for example, is around 0.1 air trips per inhabitant per year. You can see with the demographic growth of a country like India, which is the highest growth market in the world with nearly 9% on average growth per year of traffic, you can see 0.1 trips. The potential it has until it reaches economic maturity is just phenomenal.
That's what makes me so excited and so confident, fundamentally, despite the various contradictory forces that affect our business in the near term, that we are indeed on a continued growth trajectory, which translates in terms of aircraft, which is what we do, translates into over the next 20 years a need for about 43,500 new airplanes. You might have noticed that that is not too far away from the projections of our esteemed competitor. 43,500 new airplanes, we have again fertile ground on which to grow our business. Inside of that humongous number, a couple of precisions, the number of or the proportion of replacement of older generation aircraft amongst those 43,500 airplanes has increased in recent times. Why is that?
That is in a simplified way, the direct result of the pull towards more fuel efficient and therefore more eco-friendly aircraft because the latest generation aircraft typically offer airlines a reduction in fuel consumption in the order, depending on the segment, in the order of 20%-25% up to 30% versus older generation aircraft. You can see the pull towards more fuel efficient and less CO2 emitting aircraft. In addition to that, I might share with you that only about 30% of the flying world fleet today is of latest generation, is composed of latest generation aircraft. Seventy percent of the existing fleet is still last generation aircraft. You can see the demand, the strong demand for our latest generation product is still there and unassumed.
The other number I'd like to share or data I'd like to share on this forecast here is the proportion of wide bodies versus single aisle aircraft. It hasn't fundamentally changed. It remains in terms of volume, about 80% of the number of aircraft is single aisle aircraft on the A220, A320, A321 category and 20% on wide bodies. Much for the global background against in which we operate. There is a reason to be excited about our business. Now, it's a global business and of course, we serve the world and the world itself has its geographical, geopolitical ups and downs. Here is how these number of aircraft, passenger aircraft, you can see this is about 1,000 airplanes less than the global number I showed you. We're only focusing on passenger aircraft, the other 1,000 aircraft being cargo aircraft. Here's the geographical distribution of that.
You see a big trend of the center of gravity of demand naturally flowing to where the demographic growth is, which is towards the east, pulled very much upwards by India in particular, as I mentioned, and China, but also the large archipelago of Indonesia and Vietnam and other places. Large proportion, forgive me, large proportion of wide bodies remains in the Middle East, but we're also seeing an increased number of single aisle aircraft going into the Middle East. Middle East, typically when things of the large airlines of the Gulf that operate connectivity through their large hubs because they're really not, thank you very much, Guillaume, they're really not a very dense population in the Gulf, but it's rather the connectivity offered through the hubs, which explains this large proportion of wide body aircraft in the Middle East. Other than that, not much else to say.
We see some not stagnation, but the lowest growth of our airline traffic in the United States, domestic United States. It remains slightly positive, but that's where the lowest growth is. As I mentioned, by definition, the largest, the biggest growth and most energy in the development of our business is in the east. Now, let me brag a little bit about our product portfolio here. What are the products and services that we offer against this global demand? Here's a picture of our planes on the left and on the right, this cascade that you see is the segmentation of our services business. I'll say a couple of words on that.
You can see we have a very comprehensive, and as a matter of fact, the single most comprehensive product portfolio in this industry ranging all the way from a 3,000 plus range aircraft of a capacity of between 120- 150 seats, the A220 ranging all the way up to the world's reference in terms of long range intercontinental flying, which is the A350. I hope this isn't too esoteric for some of you, but the way we represent this picture here is the way airlines actually look at aircraft themselves. You see on the horizontal axis the range of the aircraft, the distance it's capable of flying typically with a full load of passengers, and on the vertical axis, its capacity, the number of passengers, the mathematical integral of the surface of capacity versus range is actually the value, the economic value that an aircraft brings to an airline.
The number of passengers it can carry over so many kilometers. That is how typically we represent aircraft together with airlines. That is our product portfolio, very modern product portfolio on the left, the only comprehensive digital fly-by-wire product portfolio in the industry all the way up to where it really matters, where technology makes a huge difference over long distances. When you fly 10, 11 hours, a difference in fuel burn becomes a big number at the end of the trip. That is where Airbus sits with the A350, the only modern technology contemporary aircraft in its segment, and that is very important in this industry. On the right-hand side are services segmentation. Yes, we offer training services. We offer operational support to airlines, meaning navigation optimization, precision navigation, and things of that nature, in particular through a subsidiary of ours called NAVBLUE.
The bulk of our services business, which is growing significantly, is in the area of maintenance, but in particular in the area of distribution of spare parts. We own a company called Satair, which is growing higher, faster than the fleet growth, and which is extremely profitable and pulls the profitability of our service business up very, very nicely. Enhancements, it's upgrading aircraft, it's offering airlines connectivity services, et cetera, et cetera. Finally, expanding, what we mean by that is consulting services, cyber, cybersecurity services, engineering services to airlines. I mention this because yes, when one thinks about Airbus, one thinks about airplanes, but our services business, which in the case of Airbus actually combines in terms of P&L measurement, the cost of supporting our customers and the revenue of selling spare parts or training services, the net result is a very positive and growing result.
The order of magnitude, for example, would be we took last year an order intake in excess of EUR 7 billion. We delivered EUR 5.5 billion-EUR 5.6 billion, I think, of services in double -digit profitability, solid double -digit profitability. We will grow that to an order of magnitude of about EUR 10 billion by 2030. A nice complement to a very strong product portfolio. A little bit more of a deep dive on each of the products. The single aisle products is, of course, our bread and butter product, particularly the A320 and A321neo family of aircraft, which have, I dare say it so bluntly, a significant technological advantage over its direct competitors that are older generation derivatives in the Boeing portfolio. Needless to say, our market shares on this particular segment is very, very strong.
I hasten to add that we really do not pilot our business based on market shares. Something you need to watch, obviously, in a duopoly or quasi-duopoly, you do watch market share, but the market shares here are really more the results of the product merits themselves and the market penetration of the A320 family. A quick word on the A220, which is the latest addition to our product portfolio. As you know, that is the former Bombardier C Series that Airbus acquired many years ago. We have expanded and more than doubled the market penetration and backlog on this airplane since we took over the program. It competes primarily with the smaller regional jets, but it sits nicely on top in terms of, remember, the payload and the range capability of its direct nearest competitor, which is the Embraer family of aircraft.
Covering that payload range capability nicely, it has been able to secure a leading market share as well. On the wide bodies, the wide bodies where traditionally this industry says, "Airbus is really, really strong on the single aisle markets," but on the wide bodies, it is really very much still a Boeing dominated or Boeing controlled market. That is not the case, ladies and gentlemen. Our performance on the wide bodies has been remarkable over the last few years. We have expanded the number of customers, which is a very important metric, as well as the global backlog very significantly with the A330neo and the A350, which since the launch of the A350 program now command a growing market share of 44% and over the last two years, actually a higher than 50% market share.
I'll stop talking about market share here because, as I said, we are not driving it, we're not driving our business based on market share, but it is a good measure of the global acceptance of the product range. In particular, the A350 is growing. It has two variants or three variants as right now. It's got the 900, the 1000, which is by far the world leader on range. And now the complement, the Freighter, I might add, and this is important even if it sounds a little bit esoteric. The Freighter was launched a few years ago, just like the A321XLR, the long range version of the A321. We launched those products on their own merits and on our own belief of the success capability of these airplanes without traditionally seeking so-called launch customers to endorse the product development decision.
We launched them "on speculation" and as you've seen, very, very successfully. Because on the A321XLR, which was just delivered, and on the Freighter, which will be delivered in 2027, we have secured significant market penetration already, 500 plus orders for the former and over 60 and counting, particularly these days for the Freighter, and those are very, very successful launches. That is what I'll say here. On the A350 in particular, because that is a product of the future still, I did mention it and it is really, really important. The 350 competes with the Boeing 777. The Boeing 777, which has yet to be certified and has encountered significant delays, is a derivative of an older aircraft. It is a heavier aircraft. I'm not here to bash my competitor nor to sell you any airplanes, but it is very, very meaningful when one projects oneself into the future of this market.
It is really on these long range aircraft that the technology makes the most difference, and Airbus has a new technology product offering. When you fly across the Pacific every time an A350 takes off, it takes off with, depending on the precise route, somewhere between 30 and 35 tons lower weight to carry for 12 hours across the Pacific than the 777 will do. Sorry, it sounds very anecdotal, but extremely meaningful when one considers that those are the two products that will compete in the intercontinental sector in the 20 years to come. Near the end of the formal part of the presentation, before I hand over to Florent, I just want to tell you a little bit about the latest commercial performance. You see on the left here the order intake that we've taken, the orders that we're, the contracts that we're signing.
You can see that over the last few years since we came out of the core of the pandemic, our book to bill on average has been significantly over one, which is a good thing for an industrial company like ours. You can see its geographical distribution with Asia increasing in proportion of ourselves as a reflection of where the growth in the world is migrating towards. Finally, that results in, oh, just before I get to the backlog, I just wanted to share with you, because I think we shared that with you last time, financing of aircraft in this day and age is not an issue. You can see that manufacturer support, which is the occasional support to junior debt or mezzanine debt for a little bit weaker credits or difficult deliveries, is in the order of 1%. It is not meaningful.
The market itself is absorbing the financing of aircraft in a very competitive way with leasing companies in particular representing now over 50% of the financing, half of which through speculative orders that lessors placed with us, lessors placed with us, and then go and market aircraft and lease aircraft out. The other half through so-called sale leasebacks of airline orders. Financing of the aircraft is still a very well-functioning and demand-driven business. Finally, yes, we are sitting on, and that's part of the challenge that we're having. We are sitting on a massive backlog of well in excess of 8,500 aircraft against the 43,500 demand. You can see there's still growth there, but we're sitting on a huge backlog across all product segments and with a geographical distribution that reflects where the world is going.
More on it in the Q&A, but having this backlog now, the challenge for our company is to deliver on it. The man, my teammate who is in charge of it, Florent, is going to join me now on stage. Two-thirds, ladies and gentlemen, of our resources, of our roughly 95,000-97,000 employees in Airbus Commercial are engaged in producing aircraft and procuring the parts that are needed. The man who leads that is Florent, and I hand over to you, Florent, to see how we're going to satisfy this backlog. Thank you.
Good morning, everyone. My pleasure to guide you a bit more into our operational world in Airbus and what does it take to deliver the backlog that you just mentioned, which is a chance for us. Our North Star in operations is to confirm the rates that you see there that have been already disclosed.
Succeeding in getting to Rate 75 on the single aisle in 2027, stabilizing the 330 at Rate 4, reaching Rate 12 in 2028 on the 350, and the Rate 14 on the 220 in 2026. This is the North Star. This is what's guiding all our activities every day to make it happen. What does it take to produce such a big backlog? We need basically three main blocks. We need a competitive and capable footprint in our internal and capacity in Airbus prepared to cope with the rates. We need a skilled and motivated workforce on the blue collar and white collar side, and we need a full ecosystem behind us.
In Airbus, those three blocks, and I will cover them in my presentation, it's 30 sites in our footprint that will increase to 35 post Spirit acquisition, 65,000 people today in operations which are manufacturing the aircraft at the best quality and safest level every day, and 10,000 suppliers that we are pulling, guiding, and allowing us to track towards the trajectory that we are following. I will cover the three blocks starting with our internal capacity. Two years ago, in the same conference, we shared with you a roadmap of our capacity increase to prepare the Rate 75 on the single aisle with a lot of investments that needed to be done to cover the full flow and the 30 sites which are manufacturing parts for the single aisle in the Airbus world on three continents.
Since then, and starting with the final assembly lines where everything comes together and allow the aircraft to fly and being delivered to the customers, we opened a new final assembly line in Jean-Luc Lagardère in Toulouse, capable of 321. This year is a big year for us. We will open a new line in Mobile, Alabama that has just been certified by EASA two days ago. We will have a new line in Tianjin, the second line capable of producing aircraft by the end of the year. We are duplicating the line in Jean-Luc Lagardère to have a second line in Toulouse, also capable of 321. We are actually getting the investment needed on the file side being delivered in a timely manner for the ramp-up, and everything will be set up in 2026 to get ready in 2027 for the Rate 75.
That's the last mile of our process. All the other sites upstream are also receiving a substantial investment to gear up. Just to give you an illustration, in Montoir-de-Bretagne for the cockpit, we will open a sixth line that we will inaugurate in July. This one will be ready already for the Rate 75, completing the landscape there. On the XLR, which is a very nice variant on the 321 family that we delivered for the first time last year, we invested dedicated facilities in Hamburg, in Augsburg, to manufacture the tanks and then integrate that into the aircraft. That has been delivered over the last 12 months, and those facilities are up and running. Across the board, the wave of the single aisle investment will be ready in due time to get to the Rate 75.
Now we enter into a wide body wave to get ready for the Rate 12 in 2028, and we will do the same over the next two years to complete all the investment by 2027 so that we reach the Rate 12 on the 350 in due time. Those investments are very much important, allowing us to get the capacity and to get also the resilience that we need in the system to accommodate any hiccup we may have down the road on our trajectory. If I look at the past two years, two years ago, we were having a big supplier called Spirit that was producing aero structure components for us. In parallel, we decided in Airbus Atlantic and Airbus AeroStructure to internalize the aero structure activities as a key make capabilities which were needed in our industrial and business model.
Many things happen in Spirit, and I will not go into all details there, but at the end of the day, given the situation, Boeing decided to buy that company. As a consequence, and it was in a way a defensive move on our side, we decided to take over the Airbus products right away because you can imagine that having Boeing as a supplier was not really what we were expecting in that world. We came very quickly with Christian and Thomas to a term sheet in Q2 last year to define the parameters of the deal, to cut a year to get to the signing phase in more details a few weeks ago, and targeting now a closing of the deal in Q3 this year.
This would add five sites to our industrial footprint in the U.S., Kingston, North Carolina on the 350, in Belfast, U.K. for the wing components of the 220, and then Saint-Nazaire, Prestwick, and Casablanca. From a product standpoint, when you read through what we will receive from Spirit, actually what we do is to complete the portfolio of products that we use to manufacture in our legacy programs in Airbus. So the wing, which is built in Belfast, will be attached to our center of competence wings, which are producing wings for the 320, the 350, the 330. And the pylon, which is made in Wichita for the 220, will be transferred to our center of competence pylon that we manufacture for the 350, the 330, the 340.
The fuselage, which is made in Kingston and Saint-Nazaire, composite fuselage, a big part, will be attached to Airbus Atlantic in the flow, which is producing the fuselage for the 350, the 330, and the 320. You see that actually by acquiring Spirit, we complete the panorama of our products in the make perimeter in accordance with our strategy defined with the big aero structure companies we created a few years ago. That means something else because we've been in the different sites for 18 months in Belfast, in Kingston, in Saint-Nazaire, everywhere with our teams. I have, as we speak, between 20 and 30 people on each of those sites, people from the center of competencies of the wing, of the fuselage, of the pylon, which are used to manufacture those products since decades in Airbus.
Thanks to that, we have basically a fairly well understanding of what needs to be done on the different sites. Obviously, when you enter into any PMI, there will be some discoveries as usual, but 90% of the industrial equation is done by us. That is why I can tell you we are so eager to take over and to take control of the sites because the roadmap to deliver the ramp-up, and that is so critical on the 350 and 220 to unlock those Spirit work packages to get to the targeted rates. We are eager to take control of the sites to deliver the roadmap, which is quite clear in our mind with all the expertise we have injected in those sites supporting Spirit at the moment and then leading the show in a few weeks' time when closing will be done.
A full industrial system gearing up and in a timely manner, which is so important for us, and a big wave on single aisle, which is coming to an end next year for the Rate 75. Now, having jigs and tools and robots, etc., is fine, but if you don't have the people which are able to manage them and to do a proper job in our file and facilities, then it's difficult to ramp. There is no ramp-up without additional efficiency in our production system. The only way to ramp is to get more and more efficient anytime you raise the ladder of the production rates. We have 65,000 people today. We recruited quite a lot post-COVID in anticipation of the wave of the ramp-up.
I think it was a very good choice, first of all, because it allowed us to remain very attractive on the market, and many people were knocking at the door of Airbus to join us in our different facilities and manufacture the aircraft and support the manufacturing of the aircraft. What we've seen as well is that the time to get the right level of skills on the different production lines was a bit longer than before. We had to reframe basically all our induction schemes through tutoring, coupling of newcomers with inexperienced people. We've been much more stringent in the way we've been qualifying our people to get the right skills right first time before entering into our production lines.
That has been a very strong reinforcement and a strong investment of the company to do so because what we have seen is that by having inexperienced people thrown into the lines, it does not help. It does not help because the efficiency of the work is not there. Sometimes the quality is not there, and you need to correct afterwards. Getting the right skills from the start and then learning aircraft after aircraft has been a choice and an investment from Airbus, which is paying off. I see that on the lines every day as we speak because the more our people become aircraft after aircraft more efficient, we see less and less non-quality being generated because they gain experience. On single aisle, when you do 300 aircraft per year on a given site, you have done 300 times the same activity, and you do it well.
Anticipating the recruitment was a good idea. Now, going forward, what we are insisting on is getting efficiency out of it, lowering the non-quality levels to be able to accelerate the flow. Basically, we will add additional workforce to secure the ramp-up. The big wave is behind us, and what we chase now is globally to increase efficiency year after year to reach the peak rate in an efficient manner and with the safest standards with our people, which is, as you know, one of the key pillars of Airbus. We talk a lot about supply chain in Airbus. In the world, in industry since COVID, we have a complex supply chain. Problems did not come with COVID on the supply chain. Over the last decade, we had suffered from supply chain crises for only one simple reason. What we are doing is complex.
Every day, we receive 3 million parts. Every day, we deliver between three and four aircraft. Our job is to manage that complexity, contain it to the maximum, and then deliver a smooth flow by anticipating to the best of what we can anything that may happen in the supply chain. Having said that, COVID has been quite a difficult period of time for many different parts of the supply chain. Volatility is never good when it comes to anticipating, forecasting, investing, having people for different elements of the supply chain. That is really what we suffered from through COVID. The good news I would like to share with you is that since the beginning of the year, we see a real inflection point there. Just by taking one number, we count every day the number of missing elements which are impacting our line.
What I see since the beginning of the year is a reduction by 40%. By 40%, we are less disrupted by elements which are not coming in due time in our production facilities. I can tell you this is a big difference, a big difference in our capability to stabilize the system, to stick to our plans. What we see since the beginning of the year is actually we have not deviated to our plans. The more we confirm the plans, the more stability we are gaining in a way because that allows us to synchronize the full system, the full ecosystem of our supply chain. The 10,000 suppliers which are delivering parts to Airbus are seeing that stability.
It is nice to see in the Paris Air Show the last two days how, in a way, trustful the ecosystem is on our plans, not because they like us, maybe they do, but because they see stability in our planning for the last few months, in particular on the single aisle, what they have not seen since years. That trust in the ecosystem, that synchronization is improving a lot since the beginning of the year. As a consequence, we have reached production levels that we never achieved on three of the four programs we are driving. That is true on the A330 Neo at a Rate 4. On the A220, we keep increasing the rate since we took over in 2018. On the single aisle, for the last four months, we are above the peak rate we have reached in 2019.
Those are the news, and that is the consequence of the stabilization of stream of what we are receiving from our supply chain. It does not mean everything is easy every day. There are two big items I would like to share with you which are still I am mentioning in what we are doing, namely cabin and engine. On the cabin side, cabin is a particular world, not so many players, high customization, more and more complex products. Christian was mentioning the wave of wide bodies that we have received. This comes with a lot of customization and differentiation from the airlines, which is absolutely normal. Getting to more 321s, getting to 321 XLR is also calling for more complex cabin products. This is our life.
Injecting those complex elements into our final assembly line is sometimes a challenge, especially due to the workload that the cabin suppliers are facing across the board to get all those programs ready, each one being specific to a customer, being delivered on time at the right level of quality to our final assembly lines. This is the element of complexity we need to manage. We have changed our organization to be a better partner to our cabin suppliers, meaning starting from the definition to the delivery in the files in full coordination with the customers and having those tripartite coordination and collegiality to take the best decisions to have the best cabin, obviously, but to have it also in due time and in a timely manner at a good level of quality to be introduced into our production system in the easiest way.
This is what we mean, very strongly reinforcing. We start seeing the first benefit. It's paying off. A cabin cycle is two years between the customer definition and the delivery to the file. We started two years ago. We see the first benefits, and we see more and more benefits all along our ramp-up. The second big element, which is obviously dimensioning, is the engines. There I would like to start by saying that together with Christian and the support of Guillaume, we invested a lot in our relationship with engine manufacturers the last three years. We have done that because there is no success of an OEM like us if there is no success for an engine manufacturer. We are all tied to our products and to the success of our products and for the benefit of our customers.
We started with Rolls-Royce, and a few years ago, we had a lot of issues with them, starting with industrial deliveries, but not only. We reframed our relationship, and today we have no industrial problem with Rolls. They deliver everything we need on time, on the 330n eo, on the 350. We have a good roadmap of product evolution. All of that is very positive from a ramp-up and industrial standpoint. On Pratt, Pratt is delivering without any issue on the 220, the engines we need for the delivery in the coming year. There, no problem. We have a roadmap to improve the engines in terms of durability, which is getting more and more concrete and visible from the customer. We see a real turning point on the perception of Pratt on the 220 on the markets.
On the single aisle, our relationship with Pratt & Whitney has been always very good. They are confronted with a legacy problem on powder metal that has led to a lot of AOGs, aircraft on ground. We navigate with them the best trade between our need on light feet and what needs to be done to melt down the number of AOGs in service. That is a direct discussion we are having with them and a very good collaboration to find the right trade-off. Regardless of a strike that happened for two weeks and a half in May, we are receiving the engines for Pratt & Whitney. We are just suffering a few delays at the moment due to this particular event. For 2025, we do not see any issue with Pratt & Whitney going forward. We are preparing the trajectory for the next few years.
The most critical point at the moment is the CFM situation. They are also very much different than what we had last year. Last year, it was a real industrial issue upstream on material availability, transition from one technology to the other. We suffered a lot to get the right number of engines to deliver our aircraft. What we see this year is a different nature. The material is flowing, and they achieved a very strong ramp-up into the core element of the engines. Everything was flowing to the final assembly line of the engines in France. The strike happened for quite some time, six weeks, without almost any production of engines during that period of time. Six weeks is quite long when you're on single aisle. The gap that's been created there, CFM now need to recover.
They are having a lot of energy to do so. That remains a challenge on their side to be able to recover that quick enough so that we can attach the engines to our aircraft and deliver them to our customers. As a consequence of the good performance upstream of all our single aisle system, we are manufacturing aircraft, and the aircraft are completed. When you just need to wait for the engines, 95% of the aircraft is completed. We have a few tents at the moment in Toulouse and Hamburg waiting for engines. Those aircraft are completed. We need the engines to come to be installed, flying, and delivering to the customer. This is the challenge of the year, not so much linked to real industrial problems, but a social one, a strike that happened and that created a gap in the production.
As you can see, it would have been 18 months ago. There were many, many different balls in the air when it comes to industrial maturity, having things aligned and synchronized to deliver the ramp. The situation was tough. The progress made over the last 18 months is very, very visible in some areas. In our job, we are paranoiac. That's the only way to do our job. With 65,000 people, 10,000 suppliers, you multiply those two numbers, that's the potential number of problems I have every day, more or less. Managing problems is my daily life. It's not so much the issue to have problems. The main issue is to have too many that last too long or that are just not anticipated.
What we've been doing with my team is lowering the number of problems by better anticipation, by not creating ones, meaning having a skilled workforce fully capable of doing the job right first time. For the problems which are arising, first, to be reactive enough, and then to have the intimacy with our full ecosystem, the 10,000 suppliers, to know the problem as soon as it arises and to tackle it with them in full transparency. We are keeping calm. We carry on, as Guillaume was saying, the world is full of surprises sometimes. Our trajectory is clear. That's the only thing we are looking at in operations, delivering the ramp-up, delivering the rate, and pulling the supply chain and the full ecosystem to that share target. What we have done the first six months is promising on that front.
Thanks a lot, Florent. If I may just add, please do not read anything between the lines on the engine situation. Yeah, what Florent described is, of course, the reality. Today, we do have a plan from the engine manufacturers, CFM in particular, a recovery plan that should see us with the ability, if that plan is delivered by CFM, to make our trajectory, including this year. Thank you very much, Florent.
Thank you, Florent. Thank you, Christian, for these two presentations. It is now time for a Q&A session. I will recall the rules of engagement, which are the same as for the quarterly calls. If you have questions, you hold your hand, you state your name and your company, and you limit yourself to two questions. It includes sub-questions as well, as usual. Voilà, no surprise on this one. Let us get started.
Ben, can we have a mic? Then we will have David just after.
Thank you, Ben, from Bank of America. On the A350, you talked a little bit about cabin. Can you talk about what the big blockages are outside of that, and how should we think about the ramp-up into 2026?
Today, when it comes to the file on the cabin side, we are suffering from delays in lavatories. Also, due to a mismanaged transfer of work between two sites. It is the cost of a transition that was not prepared enough by our supplier. We see that coming back as well. Last month, they delivered the number of lavs we are expecting, and this month will be the same. I was with them yesterday in the Paris Air Show. They are turning the corner. Still, we need to recover the backlog.
I have big aircraft waiting for lavs, which is a pity, but that's the reality of where we are. The fundamental element for the 2026 to 2028 ramp-up is, in my view, the Section 15. The product is built and manufactured in Kingston, North Carolina, by Spirit at the moment, where we need to ramp. That's why I'm so eager, again, to take control of the plants. Today, we do a lot with Spirit to help them to manage and support their supply chain management, their practice. Managing a plant is a matter of leadership, and we need to impulse new leadership there to accelerate the throughput and reduce the non-quality and get the ramp done.
I might add, Florent, if you don't mind, the cabin means essentially seats, lavs also, but seats.
There is a significant pressure on the supply of, in particular, customized seats. We all like to sit on these fancy business-class seats with big screens and suites and all sorts of amenities. I want to say that we're driving our teams and beyond our teams, the whole ecosystem, to more standardization going forward to take away this divergent complexity of cabins at the moment when we ramp up.
I think we had a question of David on this side. Then, Doug, I see you afterwards. I have seen Ken for the one after.
I was asked to stand up.
Thank you.
David Perry, JPMorgan. One question each, if I may. For you, Christian, on your product chart, it was interesting that you show the XLR as a separate plane to the A320 family.
I was just wondering, how many heads of version are there going to be and whether that's an operational challenge? The question for you, Florent, is you gave the interesting stat about missing parts being 40% better year- on- year. How would it compare to an undisturbed year in 2018, for example? Thank you.
I'll take the first part, Florent. On the XLR, David, thank you. You reminded me, I was standing here saying, I want to say a few more words about the XLR because it deserves it. You're right. On the chart, it stands on its own. Why? Because with the XLR, we've actually introduced a new segment in the market, a new product segment in which, let me not say too loudly, but in which we currently are the only ones serving it because by definition, we've created it.
That is long-range flying with a single-aisle aircraft. The XLR is based on a 321, which is our best-selling product across the whole product range. We have found a way to put additional range capability into the aircraft, which allows it to fly with a typical full load of passengers over 4,700 mi, meaning large transatlantic capability, opening new markets from smaller cities to smaller cities and avoiding having to go through hubs. Typically, our first operator was Iberia. They introduced it to Boston from Madrid. Wizz Air is now introducing it, flying from Central Europe all the way down to the Middle East. Those kind of new routes, that is why we have separated it. It is basically a new segment on its own, and it stands on its own, which explains its market success with well over 500 aircraft.
Yes, indeed, long-range flying means more amenities, means more cabin complexities, Florent, and every one of our customers has a very bespoke configuration. If you want to say a few words, by definition, it adds complexity, sure.
To your question on missing parts, I would say, globally speaking, we are probably at the same level of what we are facing in 2018-2019. For us, at the end of the day, the reference should be different because we will ramp up. We have actually reached production levels that we have never seen before. We need to be even better. All our ecosystem is chasing, at the end of the day, a much lower number of missing parts to stabilize the situation. We have demonstrated that on the systems by having new digital capabilities to anticipate, to better make the connection to our system suppliers.
On the system, for instance, we are much lower than where we were in 2018-2019. That is typically what we need to achieve on the other commodities, on the detail part, on the aero structure, on the cabin. That is when we will reach 65, 70, 75. Actually, we have a level of disruption which is in line with those levels of production.
We had a question from Doug on the fourth row.
Sure. Great. Doug from Bernstein, thanks. First question, more on the near-term side. You are looking at a rapid A220 ramp next year. You have got to get the A350 back up. Yet you told us that there would be about [audio distortion] Spirit in 2026 and 2027. The first question is, what are the bottlenecks there? How do you get through the Spirit situation to get that rate up?
Then the second one, longer term, you sold out pretty much into the early 2030s on the 350, on the A320. When you look at that and you're getting more orders and you need to get slots, how are you thinking about long-term rate? Would you be looking at higher rates when you go beyond 2028 to deal with the high order flow?
I will take the first one. If I take the two main sites on Spirit to unlock them, as you say, Kingston on the Section 15 of the 350 and the wings in Belfast, two different situations. Kingston, we have a complex composite manufacturing facility. There is no supply chain issue there. The supply chain has been clean between Spirit and our teams over the last 18 months. We have everything we need to produce the parts.
It is really a management of the plant itself. Today, there are too many reworks. Many reworks means a slowdown of the pace and additional cost. That is what we need to fix. There is a lot linked to workmanship and management of the workforce. I will give you an example. When you do composites, you have moulds. It is like a cake, if you want. If you do not clean the moulds between two cooking, then you have a problem. That is typically the kind of mistake which are done in the plant at the moment that we believe we can correct right away. On Belfast, we are manufacturing the wing. The final assembly of the wing is a stable process and checked by our experts from Broughton, our center of components on wings. There, the key question is the supply chain management and supply chain enablement upstream of Belfast.
We know the suppliers. We obviously started discussing with them. To unlock Belfast, it's not the site itself. It's more the supply chain upstream that we need to gear up and make sure they fully understood what needs to be done.
Sorry. Apologies. By mistake.
Up to you. You're the boss, Hélène, but
I was concentrated on the next one. We first answered the second question, and then we moved to Ken.
Okay. I'll try and be brief. On the rates and the lead times, it's, of course, very tempting to follow the market and continue to grow and anticipate. Right now, our objective is to stabilize at the rates that Florent has mentioned, the 14 on the A220, the 12 on the A350, 75 on the A320, and the four and change on the A330. Why?
One, because it took us considerable more effort than maybe we anticipated in convincing the supply chain that that was feasible and getting the supply chain organized to enable those rates. If we move the goalpost again, particularly in a time of uncertainty, I think that could be more disruptive than beneficial. The second, notwithstanding the fact that demand is there. The sales guy in me, of course, wants to. The second benefit, one, catch breath, stabilize, and demonstrate our credibility with those rates, which has now been achieved, and the supply chain, as Florent says, is following us towards those rates. Second point, yeah, with this strong demand, I say this carefully, but of course, it enables us to consolidate pricing. We've been through quite a bit of rock and roll, a lot of it induced by competitors' issues on their product lines, and COVID.
Now is a good time to consolidate pricing as well as we ramp. There is demand, so it's not impossible that we may move in the future. In particular, I see a lot of demand on the wide bodies, but that would be premature to go out there today and move the goalpost, in my opinion.
Now, Ken.
Ken Herbert with RBC. Two questions. The first is, when you look at the engine issues, how much of the shortfall in engines today on the narrow body side is a result of the strike versus how much is a result of other issues in the supply chain that you might see? Then second, obviously, the macro backdrop today, I would argue, is much more uncertain than it's been perhaps in a while.
What can you say to give us more confidence in the second half of this year and into 2026 and 2027 that the risk around tariffs, geopolitical conflict, other areas will not perhaps cause more disruption? I mean, what are you doing today considering that to really perhaps preventatively or as you think about that to address both near-term and mid-term challenges from a macro standpoint?
Maybe quickly on the first question, and then I will hand over to you, Christian. When I look at the current CFM situation, all the engines missing are linked to the strike. Material is there. Material is on the shelves in Villaroche. It is being delivered by GE or the supply chain of Safran directly. It is a one-to-one correlation between the stop of production and what we are falling short in terms of engine deliveries. Material is there.
The second does not have a simple answer, the second question. In this uncertainty, you refer to tariffs in particular. What actions are we taking? Until the rules of the game are stable, our view is keep going so far. We need clarity to be able to make clear decisions. Of course, in the long term, what does this uncertainty, tariff uncertainty, geopolitical polarizations, what does that inspire and inspires, obviously, for us to get organized, in particular in supply and operations, to de-risk our industrial system and our supply system from areas that may be viewed as potentially isolated or difficult to access? That is a longer term. You cannot switch off supply from one day to the next. You need to organize it, and that is what we are doing.
There is a clear trend towards more dual sourcing, double sourcing instead of being dependent on a single supplier. Those are the kind of things that the modern world, unfortunately, inspires us to do for the medium and long term. Of course, we're trying to influence. We're not a small voice in this industry. Together with our ecosystem, you may have seen that there is a very harmonious and uniform position being taken by aerospace in general, all aerospace players combined, that drive and lobby the political powers to be, ETB, towards back to a trade, unrestricted trade environment in the 1975 agreement on commercial aviation in particular. It's very reassuring to see that all voices on either side of the Atlantic and beyond are saying and singing from the same hymn sheet.
We're seeing quite encouraging signs now, in particular with the U.K.-U.S. agreement that was just confirmed and documented, whereby U.K. and U.S. have agreed that aviation or aerospace, I should say, is exempted. One, keep calm until the rules of the game are established. Of course, we're running very different scenarios. You can imagine we're paddling very, very hard under the surface, but until you know, there is no point to spook everyone and change your plans. That's what we're doing. Secondly, de-risking supply and areas of potential conflict in the future. Three, of course, orchestrating as best we can with our colleagues a lobby towards a trade-free environment.
We have a question in the middle, Ian, perhaps, in the second row. We have a question at the back, Olivier. Yes, I will stand up.
I will look on the right-hand side as well.
I've also been asked to stand up. Ian Douglas-Pennant with UBS. Thanks for taking my question. Florent, I wonder whether you recognize a narrative that you have accelerated the support that you're giving to your suppliers quite materially in the last 6 or 12 months. I mean, it was always there, but there's been some step shift recently. What I mean by that is when I talk to some of your suppliers, they say instead of having to lobby for inflationary price increases every year, based on what happened two years ago, they have to ask again, you've just given them a block price increase, which gives them the confidence they need in the longer term. You're also appearing to take more inventory.
When you've had disappointments in production in the past, you've asked your suppliers to help you holding the inventory on their balance sheet, whereas now you're building gliders, which tells me that you're taking more inventory on. Do you recognize that narrative that something has changed in the last six months?
[audio distortion] Hello? Yeah. What's beyond your point is actually what was mentioning in terms of partnership and intimacy with our suppliers. I think what we have changed together with Christian over the last 18 months is really understanding what was preventing our suppliers to ramp. Some of them were having negative margins. De facto, going to your bank and saying, "I will accelerate. I have a big order book with negative margins," just increasing the negative margins. They were not about to ramp up in any case.
We've been surgical on that. We've been surgical, meaning supplier by supplier, situation by situation. What is the best portfolio of support we can have on a temporary basis to allow them to create the trustful environment in their structure to do the ramp-up? Yes, in some cases, we had some repricing. In some cases, we took inventory because it was produced by the suppliers and then too much cash being trapped into the balance sheet for that. In some cases, we bought material or we advanced cash for them to get material. We've been surgical on part of the supply chain to allow them to ramp and to be successful.
To come back to a real competitive trajectory, when we reach the peak rates, where in particular on the aerostructure and detailed parts supply chain, volume is so important for them to saturate their assets and to get the best out of their fixed -cost base. That is the way we have seen that in part of the supply chain. You are right, there has been an inflection last year. In the overall, I would say, switch of culture, we are pushing in Airbus to really create a partnering ecosystem to become more and more competitive over time.
I want to borrow an expression from Guillaume. You mentioned inventory. In this situation where there is significant demand and we are ramping up, inventory is actually good cholesterol because it puts you ahead of the curve, including inventory by what Florent described in terms of manpower.
Hiring, training the people we know we will need and giving ourselves the time to train them is good cholesterol. What's bad cholesterol, of course, in any company is fixed costs, overheads, etc. That is what we've been attacking, and I dare say successfully so with our transformation program.
Thank you very much. Olivier Brochet with Rothschild & Co Redburn . I have two questions, if I may. The first one on services. Christian, you very kindly said that the profitability of Satair is pretty good. Could you give a bigger picture on the overall services profitability and how it should trend to 2030? Second, on A220, can you give us some—what can you say to give us comfort on the sustainability of Rate 14 with the current backlog and current product range that you have on that one? Thank you.
Okay, thanks.
Yeah, on services, if you allow, I refrain from being too precise, but yeah, the services market in general in the current day and age is about, on a yearly basis, a $160 billion market. You see we're still a relatively small player when we deliver EUR 6 billion, EUR 7 billion, EUR 10 billion or so in 2030. In terms of profitability, I mentioned it's good, solid double digit. In fact, on some of the material services distribution, in particular Satair, it's higher than that. It is, on average, diluted a little bit by the more or the less profitable, what we call flight hour service agreements, which we are maintaining. Why? Because it creates a significant customer intimacy. You really get through the flight hour service agreements, which is a service where we organize maintenance, component maintenance, and airframe maintenance for our customers, and then subcontract it out.
It creates an enormous amount of customer intimacy and knowledge deep in your customer's operation, which proves very helpful in the bigger picture, including platform sales. All in all, deep in the single digits, and certainly our ambition is to be in the high single digit margins in a few years' time. It is good business. It is growing, and it is contributive to the overall result of the company. On A220, the Rate 14, I believe, is quite sustainable. As a matter of fact, again, this is not a decision or anything like that, but I am absolutely convinced that the rate on this airplane will continue to grow. We want to go and stabilize it as early as towards the end of next year for the Rate 14.
It is not our strongest backlog, I'll concede that, but that is a strength in a market where we cannot, as I think some of our earlier colleagues remarked, we cannot serve customers before the 2030s now on single aisle on the A320 and A321. It is actually a good position to be in to have A220s offerable in 2027 and 2028. Just at this Paris Air Show, there is actually more happening than meets the eye. We have chosen not necessarily to be vocal on all of the activity given the context, but we see strong traction on the A220. I stand before you not concerned about the ability to sustain Rate 14 on the A220. As a matter of fact, I think before too long, you'll see it grow. That is not a decision yet.
Thanks very much, Christian and Florent.
We will close our Q&A session for Commercial Aircraft now. Thank you for being generous with your time because we extended a bit on the questions, but I felt.
We have to go back to the show now.
Exactly, Christian. You can head back to the show now, or you can decide to stay with us. Thank you very much for being with us this morning. Thank you. This brings us to the second part of our agenda, and there will be a Q&A session after that second part, and I will start from the right-hand side in case I have not seen some questions earlier. The agenda now will be devoted to our two divisions, Airbus Defence and Space and Airbus Helicopters. Why? Because we stand to our divisions, but also because since a few months, the content of our discussions have evolved.
You have more and more questions about what do we do, the portfolio of our products, and we thought with Guillaume, with Thomas, with Mike, and with Bruno that it would be the good occasion to present our divisions, our positioning, and our perspectives. Ladies and gentlemen, freshly arrived from the north of Europe, Mike has just entered, and I will now call on stage the CEO of Airbus Helicopters, Bruno Even.
Good morning, everyone. Very pleased to be with you this morning to update on the Airbus Helicopters trajectory and outlook. I'm glad to be positioned between Christian and Florent and Mike, not only because it gives the opportunity for Mike to be on time this morning, but also because when we look at Airbus Helicopters, I think it's a good bridge trade union between the commercial world and the defense world.
We are a dual company, as you will see, and we speak both languages, the one of the civil market and the one of the military market. There will be two parts in my presentation. First one, quick one, quick update on where we are, where we come from, and then projecting ourselves to the midterm and sharing with you what our midterm outlook, starting, of course, with the market. Where are we? Yes. Where are we? When we look at Airbus Helicopters, Airbus Helicopters in 2024, I like to start by sharing that we are a global leader. We are the leader on the helicopter market, both civil and military. 52% market share on the civil, 15% on the military market, so a clear leader on the worldwide market.
This is a result of a clear action, a clear transformation plan that we have launched several years ago, focusing on key pillars. First, our value, safety, quality. Guillaume made it clear at the beginning. That is really our core values. That is a link of trust with our customers. That is our license to operate. Clear focus on competitiveness, of course, working on our cost, our structural cost overheads. More importantly, working on our production cost with clear action in terms of optimization of our industrial footprint, in particular through the specialization of our different site. It brought a market share, of course, competitiveness, but also financial performance. Clear focus on innovation. That clearly is the best way to bring value to our customers, to position ourselves on the market and gain a market share through continuous upgrade.
You have seen regular year-on-year communication on evolution of our product range, our new helicopter like the one we introduced recently, the H160, or the one we communicated at the beginning of the year, the 140. Of course, focus on customers in order not only to develop customer satisfaction, but to grow our support and service business. As a result, we gain market share. We grow our revenues from EUR 6 billion in 2018 to EUR 8 billion or close to EUR 8 billion in 2024. We increase our backlog from EUR 15 billion to EUR 24 billion in 2024. Of course, it gives visibility and confidence and trust in the trajectory of the company and financial performance. We reached in 2023. We confirmed it in 2024, a double-digit profitability performance. This trajectory, this financial performance, it is of course a result of a strong focus on our transformation, but not only.
It's really based on a strong and robust business model. This business model, which described well, Airbus Helicopters, is based on three key pillars. The first one is our product portfolio. We have the broadest and the largest product range on the market, both for civil and military. It's based on a seven-dual platform from the light helicopter, to Ecureuil, to the Caracal, VAV helicopter addressing civil and military, and of course, specialized military helicopters like the NH90 and the Tiger. It gives us the opportunity to address any need on the market, civil and military. Of course, it's important in terms of market positioning, but it gives also the volume, and the volume is not only the growth, it's the competitiveness. The second pillar is our global footprint. Think global, act local. We have the strategy to be positioned everywhere in the world in the strategic areas.
We have more than 30 free zero customer center sites, which gives us the proximity with our customers, the ability to capture, and I will come on this just after, to capture the support and services, but of course, to know our customers, to speak the same language as us, and to position ourselves on the different segments. It is of course also about resilience. Depending on the dynamic and the momentum we see in the different parts of the world, we are well positioned to capture this momentum. Third pillar, we have a balanced portfolio of activities. When you look at our revenues, in particular in 2024, between civil and military, it is pretty well balanced, 50/50 between military revenues and civil revenues, but also well balanced between our portfolio of programs, new helicopters that we deliver on the market, and support and services.
54% of our revenues coming from the deliveries of our new helicopters, 46% of revenues coming from the support and services. This business model gives, of course, opportunity to grow, as we have demonstrated in the past years, but brings also resilience. We know since COVID that for a company, growth and resilience are really the two clear priorities for a company in the complex world we live in. Before moving and looking forward, a quick focus on support and services. You have well understood with our business model, with the three pillars, that support and services is really at the core of our business model. It gives opportunity to grow, it gives resilience, and why is that?
When you look at the track record of the past years, we have been able to grow our support and services revenues by 50% since 2018, and when we look at the performance in 2024, it represents 46% of revenues. Where it comes from? It's really important to understand what's behind the performance of the support and services. In terms of background, close to 13,000 helicopters in service, and in average, a helicopter is operated between 30-40 years. So stay between 30 and 40 years in service. It's a clear asset, and we have the clear strategy to capture the opportunity and the business potential which is behind this fleet in service because in average, a helicopter stays between 30 and 40 years in service, and in terms of revenues delivered by all this activity, it's in average close to three times the price of a helicopter.
When we deliver a helicopter, the maintenance and support activities that will be generated over the next 30 and 40 years represent three times this price of the helicopter. We have the strategy to capture this potential. The strategy is based on our international footprint. Helicopters are delivering local services, local activities. To have this international footprint gives us the proximity and the ability to serve our customers and to capture this business potential. Second, and it's really important to have in mind, when you look at the business model of Airbus Helicopters, of course, we are an OEM. We deliver platform, we deliver helicopters, but we are as well a tier one.
When we look at the main component of a helicopter, of course, we have several components starting with the engine, but when we look at all the dynamic components, all the blades, all the main gearbox, they represent close to one third of the maintenance cost of a helicopter, and this is an activity that we have verticalized. Historically, we produce, we design our main gearbox, and when it was not the case, we took the decision to acquire them on the market, and the decision we took two years ago, three years ago, to buy the activity and the aerospace activity of ZF, being now Airbus Helicopters technique in Germany, producing the main gearbox of the 135, the Tiger, and the 145. This is a verticalized activity, which of course gives us the activity to grow our support and service activity over time.
Third, as part of our strategy, to develop long-term multi-service contract, buy our contract on the civil market, but when it comes to the military market, developing long-term contract based on commitment, fleet availability, large range of services that we offer to our military customers to help them to deliver the critical mission they need, sometimes also to mitigate the challenges they see with their own human resources, and from our side, of course, to develop this key activity and support and services activity. I just wanted to be quick on this one. It's really important to understand how the support and services activities are structured because they clearly contribute to the growth of the company, but also to the resilience. Moving forward, what's the outlook, midterm outlook for Airbus Helicopters? I would like to start with the market and the worldwide market. What's the perspective we see?
The first message, when we look at the 2024 worldwide helicopter market, it's the first time it's back to the level of pre-COVID level of we had in 2019. What's the message here? First, in 2020, we have progressively recovered, but it just means that in front of us, we see the opportunity to continue to grow despite the uncertainty, despite the complexity we see in our environment. What is important to understand when we speak about helicopters, of course, on the military market, in the context where we see budget increasing in different countries, we see opportunity of growth, but on the civil market, helicopters are delivering critical mission, medical services, disaster management, firefighting, search and rescue, sea, mountain environment, police, parapublic, critical mission that are not directly depending from the economical context.
2024, back to the level of pre-COVID, 2019, an opportunity to grow both on the civil and military market. The second message, you see this on the slide, we use to explain that the worldwide market is pretty well balanced between civil and military. It's true in units. When we look at the value, the reality, the military market represents 80% of the value of the global worldwide market, and that's clearly a market that we see growing in the future. That's, of course, an opportunity to grow as well for Airbus Helicopters. Third message, beyond helicopter, we see an opportunity and we see the drone market growing, and that's clearly, as you will see, an opportunity, of course, as well for the company to capture opportunities in the future.
When I speak about opportunity to address the drone market, in particular the tactical drone market, here I have particularly in mind the governmental and the military business. In the world, we know the worldwide market will continue to grow, so it's really a world of opportunity for Airbus Helicopters in the coming years. As you can anticipate, our strategy is clearly to continue to deliver profitable growth and to build and execute the strategy to capture the opportunity we see on the market. This strategy is based on four axes. The first one on the civil and parapublic market. We want to grow in value. Today, we have a clear leadership position, 52% market share on the market, but we see opportunities to continue to grow.
On the light single, light twin segment, by continuing to work on our competitiveness and innovation, of course, we want to secure our strong positioning. On this segment, we are between 70%-80% market share. By continuing to invest, like the 140 we have introduced at the beginning of the year, we want to secure this strong position. On the medium and super medium segment, that's clearly where we have the opportunity to grow in market share. We have introduced recently the 160, the 175. We have the most modern and competitive helicopter on the market, between 6-ton and 8-ton helicopters. We are gaining market share, in particular for strategic segment like the energy segment, and that's really where we see the opportunity to contribute to the growth of our market share in terms of value on the civil market. On the military market, 2024, 15% market share.
You see the potential on the market for Airbus Helicopters on this growing market, and I will elaborate a bit more later in my presentation. Support and services, good track record, good performance in the past five, six years. We see, based on the strategy I just described before, opportunity to continue to grow, of course, on support and services. The last pillar of our strategy to continue to deliver profitable growth is not only to grow on the civil and military helicopter market, but also to develop ourselves on new business opportunities. Here I have mainly in mind the drone market, the tactical drone market, in particular the tactical military market, and I will elaborate a bit more on this later. Clear strategy to deliver profitable growth in a growing market. It is first about ramp-up. It is first about execution.
I just shared with you at the beginning of the presentation, our backlog has increased from EUR 15 billion to EUR 24 billion. It gives us visibility, and we have the potential, thanks to a strong focus on operation and execution, to continue to deliver in the next years this profitable growth. Execution ramp-up, it's first about helicopter deliveries, and I see the example of the 145 helicopter. It's a 3.8 ton helicopter. I think it's the best illustration of the challenge we have in terms of ramp-up. The 145 is the best in class on the market for its segment. It's a dual platform addressing civil and military market. That's the one where we have invested in the past years, introducing in particular a new upgrade three years ago.
I think it's a good illustration of the challenge and the opportunity we see on the market, close to 75% market share on its segment. 50% ramp-up between 2023 and 2025, that's the ambition we have. We are in this trajectory to deliver and execute this ramp-up. In 2024, we deliver 25% more than 2023, and that's again what we target for 2025. The ramp-up of our helicopter deliveries that we illustrate here with the 145 is, of course, the first pillars and the first opportunity to deliver this growth, but it's not only about operation, it's also about engineering. 40% of ramp-up of our engineering activity between 2023 and 2025. Why is it so important? Of course, our focus on innovation and product evolution is key to keep our competitiveness on the market, but also on the military market.
We secure important contracts in the past years with our home countries, and here I have in mind, in particular, the development of the military configuration of the H160 that we are developing for the French forces, but that we will propose on the export market. The evolution and the upgrade of the Tiger helicopter, the attack helicopter, but also all the different contracts that we take on the export market, and for each of them, it's an opportunity to upgrade our product evolution, and that's the reason why this ramp-up on engineering is so important, as important as it is for helicopter deliveries. Execution, ramp-up, we have the backlog to make it, and that really contributes to deliver the profitable growth in the next years. Of course, in parallel, the objective is to execute the strategy I've just described. We see opportunity on the market.
We have a clear strategy to capture this opportunity. We are executing this strategy, and it starts with the military market and our strategy to grow on the military market. There are opportunities on the export market, and we have strong success in past years, and of course, we'll continue to develop on the export market. Most of the opportunities, of course, are also coming from the increase of the defense budget in Europe, and from that perspective, helicopter fits well with these opportunities. How do we prepare ourselves to grow on the helicopter market? Clear focus on four main important activities. We want to increase the operational availability of our military helicopter in service. First, to give the opportunity for helicopters to deliver the critical mission they need to perform with the helicopters.
Of course, it contributes to the development of the support and services, but also it contributes to the competitiveness of the product when it comes to the NH90, when it comes to the Caracal, when it comes to the 145. Strong operational availability, it's clearly part of the competitiveness of this helicopter. Second, deliver on multi-role and dual platform. That's clearly what we hear from our customers. That's also lesson learned from the different conflicts we see today. More and more, we see a trend for multi-role, polyvalent, affordable, combat-proven helicopters, and that's clearly what we target with our dual helicopters, the H145, civil and military, and again, the different contracts we signed in the past years.
I have in mind, in particular, the one in Germany that we signed end of 2023, clearly illustrates the polyvalence of this helicopter from the training to the troop transport, search and rescue, including combat capability. Our dual portfolio, 145, the 160 introduced on the civil market, but thanks to the development we are doing with the French forces, we will be able to propose this H160 military configuration on the export market, and of course, the Caracal. We want to stay on, of course, specialized military platform, NH90 and Tiger. We secure with France and Spain a major upgrade with the Tiger.
We continue to invest in the NH90, and we signed an important contract, a major upgrade, what we call the software release for the NH90, an opportunity to continue to develop this platform, and with our partner, Leonardo also, we are part of a project at European level funded by European Fund of Defense to prepare the next technology for the future military helicopter. Last but not least, we have one clear approach, one Airbus approach when it comes to the positioning on the drone market with Airbus Defence and Space, from the tactical drone to the more strategic drone, one Airbus approach to give us the opportunity to position us as a leader on this drone market. Military helicopter market, there are clear opportunities in front of us, and we have clear strategies to capture these opportunities.
Regarding the drone and Mike, we'll elaborate a bit more also when it comes to the product portfolio for Airbus Defence and Space. Again, one Airbus offer, we want to be in position to propose a complete product range to our customers. We see needs growing for drone capability, and here's the way we answer to this request. We invest by ourselves. We develop some different products, and the VSR700 for Airbus Helicopters is one example. Self-investment, organic development, acquisition when it makes sense, and that decision we took recently to buy the company Aerovel, designing and producing the Flexrotor, which we consider being really competitive on the market. Acquisition, it's part also of our strategy and partnership because it's not our ambition to be exclusive. We really want also to be in position to propose a large range of product portfolio and partnership.
It's part of our strategy. We want to propose a tactical drone. We want also to leverage the technology we are developing for this drone to be able to propose unmanned helicopters, which is more and more also a request from the market, and we want to propose global solutions based not only on product drone or unmanned helicopter, but also ability to team to connect drone and helicopter, which is more and more what we see as a request from our customers on the market. I will conclude now with this slide to share with you the midterm outlook we see for the company. As you have well understood, we see on the helicopter market a growing market. We see opportunities in front of us.
We have a clear strategy to be in position to capture this opportunity, to continue to deliver profitable growth for the company, to continue to contribute to the growth of Airbus, and the ambition we have is to cross the line of the EUR 1 billion profitability in 2028, moving from EUR 800 million EBIT in 2024, and to deliver more than EUR 1 billion in 2028, thanks to our transformation journey, thanks to the execution of our ramp-up, to continue to grow our support and services portfolio, and of course, take benefit of the opportunities we see on the military market.
Beyond 2028, to continue to deliver profitable growth, of course, and we see here clear opportunities, clear upside coming from the Europe defense context, coming from the opportunity to grow on the civil market, to increase our military market share, and to leverage on the opportunity we see on the drone market. Exciting perspective, and we are really motivated to continue to deliver these strong opportunities in front of us. Thanks again.
Thank you very much, Bruno. I will let you go back to your seat, and I will call you back afterward for the joint Q&A session. Thanks very much. We are moving now to the next presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please help me welcome on stage the CEO of Airbus Defence and Space, Mike Schoellhorn.
Good evening, everyone. Yes, I made it, and I accomplished something already this week, which was the graduation of my daughter, who finished med school, so I'm very happy to be here. There are maybe three things that I would like to accomplish in the talk today with you and for you to take away with you. One is, obviously, you've been hearing about Airbus Defence and Space, ADS, as we say, recently, largely in the context of space write-downs and the losses that we have incurred. I do want to get across the message that the team is doing an excellent job with new leadership to turn the ship around and turn it into a profitable and growing business. That said, the whole division is in transformation. I will speak about that too.
Secondly, I do want to convey a little bit the portfolio that we have, which is really, I think, of an amazing breadth and depth. I know you're all experts in A320 ramp-up, but if I get carried away in speaking too much about my products, then forgive me, please, but I think it's important that you know how we are, what we have, what we already have in our portfolio today, what we're working on for the future. Thirdly, where's the beef? What's going to come of this in terms of financial results? What does ReArm Europe mean for us in ADS?
At a glance, you see the division here with some key numbers, the 36,000 employees, all very passionate and motivated and talented to contribute to what we do for our customers and for our countries and for democracies, as we are only acutely aware of. I'm not going to read all the numbers to you to see the number of locations. You see the partners. I think what is important is that we've already benefited from the uptick in defense spending in the past two years significantly. You see the order intake in 2024 was almost EUR 17 billion. We had almost EUR 16 billion in 2023, the year before. Our 2024 revenues are EUR 12.1 billion, so you can do the math. We have a book to bill of EUR 1.4 billion in 2024, and we see growth coming our way as well.
You might recall that Thomas and Guillaume have talked a lot about what we're doing in terms of transforming and restructuring ADS, and a big part of that is creating three separate business units that have full end-to-end accountability. You see those three units mentioned here. Hang on, that was a bit too quick. Let's flip back, please. You see the three business units depicted here on the right: Air Power, all military aircraft, Space Systems, all of our spacecraft that are in space, and including the space systems that we produce, and then Connected Intelligence, which is maybe the least- known business unit in the area. The division, as such, was created more than 10 years ago with these three things bolted together in a very, let's say, tight way, but we've come to the conclusion that actually we need to let go a bit more.
These things are too different in nature to have a big matrix organization that tries to find synergies where they aren't. With that, I flip over and speak about Air Power. Air Power is the biggest of the three and maybe the most well-known, and you see a lot of great products also shown here at our display at the Paris Air Show. On the left, transport, mission, and tanker aircraft. I think this is undoubtedly the area that we lead in Europe and partly even globally with our very known products, the A400M, the MRTT, the tanker, the transport and tanker, and the C295, all leaders in their respective fields. I could probably give a sales pitch here about each and every one of these products. You heard, or maybe you have read, just the news that we secured another year of A400 production.
That's always been a question that's been lingering around. We are on a good track to restore the profitability of A400M and are delivering on our promises there. The MRTT is, I would say, the tanker that has captured the whole world market except for the U.S. and very few other countries. We see with the MRTT+ , which is the new development, a lot of traction in the market coming our way with all the air forces needing many more flight hours and needing much more time on station, as they call it. They need to keep the fighters in the air. This means they need more tankers, and that's why we are doubling down on the tanker market with the MRTT + that we have in development.
The C295 is a smaller aircraft, 9-ton payload, clearly the leader in its segment and maybe not so much of a halo product, but racks up a lot of orders, very known for the fact that it is the first military final assembly line that was created in India for this aircraft that India chose. On combat, our current product, bread and butter business, is the Eurofighter. We have a total order book of 721 Eurofighters. We do not usually make as much fanfare as others, but I would say the clear number two in this in Europe has about 200 orders less. You know who that is. We clearly lead in terms of the order book as the most successful European fighter program. We have about 109 of those aircraft still to build, and we see significant campaigns and significant interest in higher orders.
Those could exceed or could go into three-digit numbers. We have, obviously, Germany that has expressed that they will buy additional ones. We have campaigns running in Saudi Arabia. We have campaigns running in Turkey that everybody has read about in the press, and there are other things in the making that I do not feel so comfortable to speak and mention them at this point in time, but there is going to be a long life and successful and profitable life of the Eurofighter. It will become a platform that will be able to communicate with other platforms that can guide and fly with unmanned and uncrewed aircraft. Still the backbone of many European air forces and air forces in other areas.
Future air power, FCAS, future combat air system, the future of air warfare, I think confirmed also as much as we know by the recent battle between India and Pakistan. The future of air battle is not platform-centric. It is network-centric, and this is what the concept is all about. This is why we continue to stand behind it. We have the same commitment as on day one, and we need to find a way to make it happen because the principle is the right one. I guess there might be some questions, so I keep it short. Service and air structures, when you fly more, you get more services. So, we're already seeing a good uptick in both top line and bottom line on services because the air forces fly a lot more. They patrol the eastern flank of NATO. They do more exercises.
They do a lot of things that they had not done in many years. Aerostructures is a relatively small business that keeps us competent on the specifics of building military aircraft that sometimes have other requirements than commercial ones, like stealth and like others. Moving over, if the clicker works. Bruno talked about drones already, and drones is something that many people have in mind now from the war in Ukraine, and many people think of small quadcopters and things that do amazing things in the war. Yes, drones have really accelerated big time in recent years in the conflicts that we see. We have one offer that we have sorted out as far as the portfolio goes. The slide is interesting from its design.
It covers more than it shows, but maybe that you see that as an invitation to also visit us at the Paris Air Show because you're going to see most of these birds on the display there. You see a bit the different altitudes at which these aircraft fly. You see very much on the right-hand side, the highest one of those, which is what we call HAPS, a high-altitude platform station. Some people call it a pseudosatellite, a solar-propelled glider that can stay in the stratosphere for months, can have Earth observation with precision that is enabling you almost to read the newspaper from there, has military secure communication capabilities, is a lot cheaper than a satellite, and has a lot more endurance than an aircraft or a drone that can classically fly at much lower altitudes.
This is really a concept that we have developed on our own dime, that we expect a lot of traction. We're seeing that coming. It's a unique thing, and I think we will make that a very successful product. You see combat drones there that would point to FCAS and other fields of our activities. You see the Eurodrone. You see a small drone on the right-hand side called SIRTAP. It's a drone that we developed for Spain in only three years. It will fly next year. It will be an army drone. It will also be on the Spanish aircraft carrier. We have a lot of drones in the portfolio that we maybe don't tout so much about that others do.
We also are aware that sometimes other companies, smaller companies, startups are better at building certain types of drones, especially when they are small, when they are very inexpensive, when we are too big to be good enough for that. That is where we team up. You might have read about our partnership with Quantum Systems, a German startup that is meanwhile a unicorn that is also active in Ukraine. We also think of the whole drone system as an ecosystem because we all need to learn fast. There is so much happening with a lot of software updates and upgrades that happen at lightning speed in these conflicts, and we need to be ready to accommodate that. I move over to space. In space, we have a lot of discussion currently that also touches on other companies. Leonardo and Thales, you know that, and possibilities and plans to potentially come together.
I would say we have, again, by a margin, the widest and most complete portfolio. You see we have basically everything that you need in space, and we do not need to hide ourselves against any U.S. competition. We have some of the most sophisticated Earth observation satellites. You see Pléiades Neo mentioned here as the one that probably has the highest resolution. We also have smaller ones, more inexpensive ones that now lend themselves to building constellations. Isa is talking a lot about a European resilience system, which is an Earth observation constellation, and I think it is the right thing to think about. We are active still and very much in science and exploration. That is not always so defense-prone as a lot of institutional business. It is, if you will, also our contribution to fighting climate change.
There's a lot of instruments, very sophisticated instruments that we build for exploration and science purposes that monitor the climate, that measure biomass on the planet as a measure of how much CO2 can be absorbed. We are a big part at the core of the Artemis mission with the U.S., which is a bit in discussion right now, but we have two batches of the so-called European service module secured, and we're now seeing what the U.S. comes up with with regards to the third batch. Satellite telecommunication is the core, is the beginning, if you will, of satellite as an infrastructure. We have shifted very much our focus to more military, to MilSatCom. We still remain successful in commercial telecom because that's where the innovation comes from. This is where all the software-defined satellites actually have been created for and are making now their way into military.
A bit of the reverse innovation cycle that you usually see where military seems to be advanced, and then it trickles over to the commercial side. Navigation, we built the second generation of the Galileo system, a navigation system, a PNS system that is actually thought to be better than the GPS system. Europe can really do things if we get serious. We have some world-leading space products that I would bet most people do not know here so much. We built them under certain brand names like TESAT and Jena- Optronik and Crisa. They make very specialized equipment that other space companies also buy from us, but we also build them for ourselves. Lastly, to connected intelligence, the word intelligence might imply that this is very secretive, and that is maybe why it is not so well known.
In military lingo, if you think of the sensor-to-shooter connection that turns sensor information or sensor signals into information, decision, and then ultimately sort of tells you what to do, this is what the CI guys do all the way through. We have, first of all, to make this all cybersecure, we have a cybersecurity branch in this business. We expand on that. We have bought a smaller company last year named Infodus, which really complements our portfolio very nicely. We have a public safety and security business in CI that equips the blue light forces, police, fire departments, and other security services with secure communication means. By the way, we secured the Olympic Games in Paris through our teams and our solutions in public safety and security. Defense digital is actually the core, especially in a more militarized and more volatile world of what CI does.
This is really where the command and control systems get programmed, the things that really connect, again, the sensor to the shooter. We benefit a lot from the additional attention and traction that ground-based air defense gets in Europe with a lot of catch-up that needs to be done. Space digital largely is the business that turns the satellite data into valuable information. There is a big part of commercial business that we have with that where very detailed satellite maps get created, and you can look at them also on the internet, but obviously also for military and intelligence purposes. Europe is fragmented still in defense, as many people have spoken about. We are not one unique market as the U.S. is or China is. We have several players in Europe. We compete against each other.
One way of really creating traction and consolidate when you can't consolidate organically, from a company point of view, is to create JVs and partnerships. MBDA is a very well-known example where Europe had four or five missile makers in different countries that were all subscale. Probably none of them would exist today if we hadn't come together in MBDA jointly with BAE Systems and Leonardo. We have a 37.5% stake in MBDA as the other joint ventures consolidated at equity. MBDA, as you would assume, benefits a lot from the current situation and has huge growth and needs to now ramp up all of their products, which span everything from air-to-air to air-to-ground to battlefield solutions and everything else. Really a very valuable stake that we have here in this company.
ArianeGroup is the joint venture that we share with Safran, building the only European heavy launchers and is called Ariane 6, which has had two successful flights so far and is ramping out now to a Rate 10. Also, we're developing there the first European reusable launcher called Maia. You could argue, why is that coming so late against SpaceX and everything, but maybe we touch on that if there's questions in the Q&A. Lastly, I mentioned Eurofighter already is a very successful coming together of the same three companies as in MBDA, BAE Systems, Leonardo, and Airbus, representing four countries, the U.K., Germany, Spain, and Italy. We have 46% of that ownership, and we see a lot of good traction going forward. The last partnership is maybe one of a special kind.
Sometimes we call our competitors that we also team up with competitors in our industry, and that would be the case with Dassault. We compete on fighter aircraft. We partner in FCAS and in Eurodrone, and Airbus has a shareholding of 10.5% in Dassault. You can see the numbers. I'm not going to read them to you, but they are a partner and an investment and a competitor at the same time. Let me move on to what does this all lead to now when Europe wants to really double down and rearm and be able to defend ourselves with less and less U.S. support that we can anticipate. Bruno has already shown the main areas that were identified in the EU white paper as priority areas.
You see that on the left side from missile and air defense through artillery systems, which we don't do, all the way down to strategic enablers and critical infrastructure protection, which directly points, for instance, at space. If you take this analysis and project it and transpose it into our ADS portfolio, we have almost something to offer for every one of these single priority areas and gaps. You see the connection there. We tried to depict that a little bit with numbers. When Europe wants to build their own secure communication constellation in space called IRIS², of course we should be part of it, and we have something to offer there, including the way to that constellation. If MBDA or if Europe needs to build now a lot of missiles to equip fighter aircraft with missiles, then MBDA will benefit from that.
All the way through, I think the logic speaks for itself. What does that lead to? First of all, we expect quite significant order intake for the next couple of years. That will then lead to obviously top-line growth a little bit later because it is then coming in chunks over the years afterwards. In our estimation, this is a scenario that we have modeled, not a super optimistic one, but not a pessimistic one either. Looking at the market, and I would ask you to look at the numbers at the Y-axis so you do not confuse the sizes of the three different markets by the depiction. They are slightly different, the Y-axis, but for better legibility. We do expect quite an uptick coming on the Air Power side, but it will probably come beyond 2030 because the order intake will now happen between now and 2029.
There will be growth already, as you see it in 2028, but the biggest chunk of the growth will probably come a little bit later. The CAGR should be increasing in our expectation to at least 10%, 9%, 10% range. On Connected Intelligence, where we already have quite a significant growth, we see another uptick. It will mainly come from cyber, and it will come from what I call the command and control systems because of all the other systems that get purchased, and we equip land companies, air companies with those systems. In space, where we would not have seen growth for the addressable market that we have as a European company, prior to rearming Europe, we see the world changing significantly. We see in this case for the market on average a 6% CAGR when we would have seen a flat market before.
That will cover a lot of the military assets that I touched on before, especially by Earth observation and by telecommunication, both as individual satellites, but also as constellations in the LEO and the Low Earth Orbit. That should enable us, even without the rearm, I will say, because you see the benefits largely happening after 2028, to move from this very unsatisfactory situation in 2024, where the good work in air power and CI was destroyed, if you will, by the bad results in space, and we racked up EUR 600 million in losses, to come to about a EUR 1 billion EBIT contribution for Airbus as a group by 2028. We will do that through the transformation that I spoke about before. You probably have read before. That also entails a job reduction program of more than 2,000 people. We are well progressed on that.
We are ahead of the curve, and we are delivering on the cost reductions, especially also as far as fixed costs and overhead structures go. We deliver on our space turnaround plan, and also there we are on track. We go all the way through. We have changed a lot of things in space from leadership to how we do bids, how we do risk management, how good our project managers look also at contract management, and all the little details that you need to do to turn such super complex projects with very ambitious and sophisticated customers into a profitable project at the end. We have worked a lot on the portfolio and our bid selectivity. The additional levers that we see beyond 2028 should give us even more tailwind. I spoke about European defense and the upside there.
We will continue to run and double down with the transformation. This is not a flash in the pan or just a two-year or three-year thing. We will make that a whole culture of driving performance, efficiency. We see increased demands, and we see a need and an opportunity to become faster. The world in defense is turning much faster. The old times where customers took three years to write down books of specifications and handed them down to a few guys that then turned in bids, and then two years later somebody got selected and developed for 10 years, that's not going to work anymore in the times that we see today. Everything will be software-defined, open architectures. We need to anticipate what's coming. We need to live with the fact that our customers don't always know what they might need in three and five and 10 years.
We need to be ahead of the curve and modify our approaches. Summarizing, probably what I want to convey is a lot of focus on execution. I think we have the right portfolio. We have the right product already that we can benefit from with everything that's happening around us as we speak. We need to do the job correctly. We transform the company in the right direction, and we prepare for the ramp-up. I spoke about the Eurofighter before. In Eurofighter, a few years back, the final assembly line in Germany was idled. It was then ramped back up again for the so-called Tranche 4 of the German Air Force. It is now producing. It was planned to be producing at a Rate 10 per year. It is now producing at Rate 14.
We already have a fixed target to go to 20, and we're already planning to go to 30. We basically are tripling our build rates on Eurofighter. We invest in light of what I spoke before of in terms of this, how do you succeed in this dynamic world of the customer not always knowing what precisely will the requirements of a product in five years. We need to anticipate. We need to also targetedly invest in areas where we know there will be customer traction, where we have the capability to be early enough to the market. That applies for the Zephyr that I just spoke about. That applies for drones as a whole segment and some very select areas as well that we will accelerate how things get done in the defense world. We team up. I spoke about the joint ventures.
I spoke about the European programs that we have. There is a lot of work going into the consolidation, the possible consolidation of space, of European space with the three players. That would be obviously a game changer in terms of scale and not only having the technology that we all have today on par with the U.S., but also creating a scale that is then basically at the same level as the big U.S. players. We foster collaboration not only with the big guys, but with the small guys as well. We partner with drones. We have established an ecosystem way of thinking about future products. That is also a culture change. I'm not denying that. That's part of our transformation, and it will help us to get faster and tap into markets and learn from situations that otherwise would be more difficult for us.
With that, I've come to the close. Thank you very much for your attention. I hope it was not too much and the balance was right between product, portfolio, and financials.
Thank you very much, Mike. I will now call back on stage Bruno for a joint Q&A session. I will move to the right-hand side of the room to make sure I see questions over there. We have a question on the third row.
Hello. SaÏma Hussain from AlphaValue. The tactical drone market is really crowded and fast-moving with agile and battle-tested players, as you've acknowledged. What is Airbus' current positioning and market share as you've spoke about market share in all your business units? Given its early day, if I may say, how do you plan to strengthen your presence and what is your current strategy to compete effectively on this segment?
I think the first ambition, as you have understood, is to position ourselves on this tactical drone market, mainly driven by military and governmental needs. Our strategy is not to be exclusive, not to cover all the needs that we see on the market. There are some segments where we have to accept and recognize that in terms of agility and competitiveness, we are not the best one positioned and that is the reason why with Mike, we have the clear view that it's not only developing ourselves by investing in our core product, but also by teaming. On your question, no specific ambition in terms of market share. It's really developing ourselves on this market. It's a growing opportunity for Airbus. By positioning Airbus on this market, it will contribute to the growth of the market.
On your question, teaming, because we also think that the opportunity is not only developing and proposing a product, tactical drone like the one we have with Survey Copter, like the one we have with the VSR700 we are developing as a Flexrotor we just acquired. Teaming, combining platform and drone at the end, proposing global solution, it's really where we see also a role for Airbus as a system provider. That is also the reason why you have probably seen communication, recent communication on services, edge teaming, that not only we have experimented, but that we now propose to the market. I'm not clearly specifically answered to your question on the market share. First, it's about developing, capturing opportunity, being a credible partner, proposing global solution based on our own product.
Again, open architecture that Mike mentioned is a key aspect also, not being exclusive. Some of our customers will have their own product, their own tactical drone. Our role as a system provider is also to be able to connect with their own solution. That is a way from our side to be competitive. Also, in the way of working and that way we can benefit. Mike, again, you insist on this, we have in our organization a lso a specific organization, legal entity in the tactical drone. We have Survey Copter in the south of France. It is the kind of structure, agile, competitive, that we can benefit from.
Maybe not much to add. You asked about tactical drones specifically, but if you look at drones as a whole, Europe started late. Let's just admit to that. If I look at the portfolio that belongs more to Defence and Space, yes, we are behind the U.S., we are behind the Israelis, we are behind the Turkish. I think we are now starting with a lot of pedal to the floor. That entails, as Bruno Even said, a lot of partnering, but a lot of good products that we now have in development and that will augment the few that we have already in service.
There is a question from Sash in the middle of the room, and then I've seen a hand on the right-hand side.
Yeah, thank you, Sash Tusa, Agency Partners. Two questions on defense. First of all, just on the defense restructuring, as far as I can recall, you're the only defense company in Europe that's actually cutting your employees rather than increasing your number of employees. It doesn't give an impression that you're that confident of gaining a lot of the presumed increases in purchasing coming from rising defense budgets. I mean, second point on space, neither you nor Roberto Cingolani yesterday gave the impression that the consolidation was necessarily inevitable. I mean, I think both your comments have been quite nuanced.
Would it be fair to say that the changes in the relationship between Europe and the U.S., particularly in the first quarter, and some of the comments made by Elon Musk about Starlink's ability to be turned on and off have sort of removed some of the pressure that you felt to consolidate? There might be a big enough European market as it is. Thank you.
Thank you for the questions. On the first one, I do not think I said we're cutting jobs. We're cutting people. I said we're cutting jobs. That does not necessarily mean, maybe it's a detail, that does not necessarily mean that we're reducing the number of people. We're cutting jobs that we think we do not need anymore, especially in the overhead and on the fixed cost side. We are actually continuing to hire for the people that we need to do what I've talked about, the ramp-up, the additional opportunities. There is not a lack of confidence. There is a streamlining of the cost base. That's what's behind it. On the consolidation in Europe, you could argue that some of the things that Musk said and the U.S. has done have been sort of almost like a sales agent for Europe, for European companies.
That might be one way to look at it. I still think that the consolidation in Europe makes a lot of sense and is still needed because we do fight in the world market against very large players, not only SpaceX. If you look at the military market, you have Lockheed Martin, you have Northrop Grumman, you have Boeing. I mean, they're all a lot bigger than any European company. When it comes to export, when it comes to other things, we're not only thinking of the European market. We face these companies with a lot of strong political push. I think it would make a lot of sense to, if you only take the notion of we develop every new product once and not three times, and we double down and we support through one approach in the export market, that already makes it a worthwhile endeavor.
Aymeric, you had a question, and then I will move over there to the left.
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Could you give us an update on this relationship in particular ahead of the fighter and also the relationship with the competitor, Dassault, and the FCAS? Could you give us an update on this relationship in particular ahead of the phase two negotiation that are happening later this year? Also, if there is a window for a closer cooperation with the GCAP, which is also led by your partners on the Eurofighter, what is this window and what should we expect on that?
I almost anticipated that question would come. I mean, there's a lot of discussion right now of FCAS and notably the NGF, the next generation fighter in the transition from the so-called phase 1B, which we're currently still in, to the so-called phase two.
We're still working until about, depending on the pillar, the year-end in phase 1B, and we are on track. That's the first part of my answer. What we're currently doing works. It might not be working as seamlessly as we would all hope in a program, but we're still in the early phase, the so-called demonstrator phase. Now we need to go to the phase 2, which will end up with flying demonstrators, which will end up with functioning things, so moving away from technology development. Yes, there's a need to get more fluid and to collaborate better in the cooperation. I'm not going to comment too much on what Dassault has recently said or has said these days in the press, but I think there has been a clear scheme of how to work together worked out. It took quite a long time to get there.
It was needed to get into phase 1B. I'm advocating this is what we have come up with. Let's keep that. If we keep that and all live with that and learn how to collaborate, which we have not done 50 years with Dassault like we have done with BAE Systems, then we will learn how to collaborate. It takes the will to get there.
We have a question on the left-hand side, second row, Ben.
Ben Walker, TCI. Christian talked earlier that due to the strong demand in commercial, that he'd be taking the opportunity to improve pricing. Can you assure us that you'll be doing the same thing in Helicopters and Defence?
We aim for the right prices for the right segment for the situation at hand. That can mean that we increase prices. As you know, the logic in terms of defense procurement is a bit different compared to the commercial world because you have a lot of price auditing schemes in different countries. You need to deliver a lot more transparency to your customer who allows you a certain margin, which you can improve if you manage your projects well and you can try to keep your contingencies. Your ability, at least with the usual customers that we have, I'm not speaking so much about export customers, but the European ones, is somewhat limited. You cannot increase radically. You need to have a logic behind it. It tends to be very cash positive. From a cash flow point of view, you get a lot of upfront money.
From an EBIT point of view, you need to do a good job to come up with something that really works, and you double down and make more money in the export market.
Regarding helicopter pricing, it's clearly one of the levels we have on the market. At the end, one of the objectives we are targeting is finding the good compromise between competitiveness, financial performance in order to continue to develop in a sustainable manner as a company on the market. I think we have demonstrated in the past years that we are able to navigate in this environment, delivering both competitiveness, market share, growth, and profitability. There is no reason to think that we would not be able to do it in the coming years.
Looking at questions. There is Olivier.
Olivier Brochet , Rothschild & Co Redburn. Two questions. The first one on Air Power. Could you give us a sense of how the margin will trend in that business to 2030, 2034? Is it going up? Is it going down? Because more OE, please. On the second one on MBDA, you did not share any sense of where the revenues are going with EUR 37 billion of backlog, seven years of production effectively. What is the outlook there? Where should we stand compared to the EUR 5 billion or so that you did last year in 2028 or 2030? Thank you.
Okay. I feel more comfortable answering to Air Power, I will say right away, because it's not an MBDA Analyst Day or something. On air power, we are with most of our platforms where the benchmark companies are, which is typically a 10% range of return on sales. We have some programs still in the portfolio that we need to improve, A400 being one of them. I think I would say by after 2028, this was meant by what I said on the slide, the effect of A400 will be going down and down because it improves. At some point in time, which will likely be way beyond 2030, A400 might stop as a production program. It's very profitable on the service program. The mix of activities changes to the more profitable side, and that's why there's additional uptake.
On MBDA, all I feel comfortable to say at this point in time is they have a huge ramp-up challenge. They have strong, strong order intake, and we can see a lot of growth coming from MBDA. I know you want it more precise.
We have a question from Ben on the first row.
A quick question on helicopters. You talked about the 15% market share on the military side. How should we think about that over the next 10 years? Is there a real opportunity to grow? A follow-on on space. Can you talk about the timeline for a space consolidation and what has been the feedback that you've received from the European Commission around the consolidation? Thank you.
On the first question, as you well understood, the military market is clearly one of the levers we have identified to grow in the future for two reasons. The first one, we see the market growing by itself. We see many countries increasing their defense budget. From that perspective, of course, helicopter will benefit through the need to renew some equipment. The military market will grow by itself. The second aspect is being at 15% from one side. Looking at the trend on the market, we consider that we have good reason to think that we would be in a good position to grow our market share. We have today a competitive state-of-the-art and combat-proven helicopter, in particular when it comes to the dual platform. That's the case for the 145 that we see being very successful, a challenge of the ramp-up.
When we look at the order book and the recent order we secured in Europe and on the export market, we see the 145 being well-positioned against strong market share, almost no equivalent. The 160 that we introduced on the civil market, we developed the military version. We will be in position soon, before the end of the decade, to propose this helicopter on the export market. The Caracal today, which is really successful on the military market, multi-role, polyvalent, combat-proven, when I look at the track record since early 2024, we have secured almost 70 bookings on this segment. Again, when I hear and I see the feedback from our customers looking at multi-version, polyvalent, combat-proven, competitive offers, that is really where with our dual platform offer, we are well-positioned.
On the specialized helicopter side, the NH90, thanks to all we have done in terms of maturity of the product, in terms of support and services and improving the fleet availability, from the product side, this helicopter is well recognized by all the customers, being the most competitive on the market. We see also good opportunities on this aspect. The military market is growing, we have the ambition to grow our market share. Yes, military platform will contribute to the profitable growth of Airbus Helicopter in the coming years.
On space?
On space, we're currently in the due diligence phase. That is, we're looking into each other's files and build a business case for ourselves, build the valuation of who's worth how much. That will have to lead to a decision in the second half year, yay or nay, do we think it's the right thing to do. The DG COMP, so the European Commission, is ramping up their work to look into the file. What we're hearing is there's a lot of understanding for our motivation, for our logic, which says we participate in a global competition. If Europe wants to be a competitor on a global scale, we need to do something that resonates. Now, they have to check the file against their own regulations and everything that they have in their rules. If I take what Mr.
Kubilius said yesterday as a very positive sign, he said we have a need to consolidate in defense. He did not say space, but space has a big defense part as well. We will not stand in the way. I mean, he did not say that, do not quote me verbatim, but basically he said he is very much in support. I think we have the right condition for success, but we do not have a guarantee. The process from when we would sign a binding commitment to go together could probably take years, two years as a thumb, as a guesstimation, because it is quite a complex operation to carve all of the things out that we have in space to go and anticipate the whole DG COMP process. It could also go faster, but maybe I stay on the conservative side.
Thank you very much, Mike and Bruno, for your presentation, for being with us this morning, and for playing the game of the Q&A session. I'll let you head back to the air show if you want, or if you want to stay, you're welcome. We are now moving to the third part of our agenda this morning, financial perspectives. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome on stage the CFO of Airbus, Thomas Toepfer.
Thank you very much. Very happy to see so many of you here in the room, but also a very warm welcome to all the people who are joining us remotely. First of all, let me start by expressing how glad we are and how helpful it is to be in constant dialogue with you. I can tell you your feedback and the questions that we receive from you are really key for us when it comes to thinking about capital allocation, our financial policies, how we drive the business. The dialogue with you really for us is one of our key considerations. At the same time, obviously, we do live in very interesting times, let me put it this way, and our focus is very, very clear. We are focusing on driving our financial resilience.
We are focusing on capital discipline for the entire company, and we want to create value for our shareholders. I hope that you see these key themes in the slides that we will present to you. More operationally, you have seen and heard from my colleagues that the commercial aircraft ramp-up is, of course, at the heart of what we're doing, just as much as the transformation of our Defence and Space portfolio and maintaining a good capital allocation. The things that Bruno talked about, the opportunities we have in Helicopters. I would like to give you some more color on how this all comes together, then also from a financial perspective in the next couple of slides. To just set the scene a little bit, let me start by saying our guidance for 2025 remains unchanged.
That is the first message that you see on the slide here. We are targeting around 820 commercial aircraft deliveries. We are targeting around EUR 7 billion of adjusted EBITDA for the group and around EUR 4.5 billion free cash flow before customer financing, unchanged from what we have communicated at the beginning of the year. If you look at our operating environment, you see a number of positives and negatives. On the positive side, obviously, we are seeing a clear shift with a new approach in European defense. I think we are really exceptionally well-positioned to benefit from that. I hope that the presentations from Bruno and Mike were able to underline the good product portfolio that we have, the Airbus approach that we have across divisions to benefit from that European situation quite specifically.
On the other hand, you see also that the environment, and you know that the environment is very uncertain from a global trade perspective, and we are facing uncertainties with respect to tariffs. Nevertheless, I will try to give you a feel on what are the positives and the negatives building blocks that we see and how could they contribute in our trajectory starting from 2025 into the midterm. I'll try to summarize that for you a little bit on this page and give you some feel where do we expect to go. First of all, let me start with the A320 family. We continue on our ramp-up trajectory towards Rate 75 in 2027 with a continuous increase in the share of the A321, which today represents more than 70% in the backlog of our order book.
We're also increasing the portion of the latest variant of the family, which is the XLR, up to a rate of 10 in the midterm. In a nutshell, that means we are ramping up with a more favorable mix as the A321 and the XLR benefit from their positioning and hence come with a margin upside relative to what we had in the past. The aircraft delivery volume is also increasing on the A220 as we continue towards a monthly production rate of 14 aircraft in 2026. With this, the deliveries should double between 2024 and 2028.
You know the program is at this point still loss-making as we speak, but we confirm our profitability trajectory, and we do expect to reach break-even both on EBIT and free cash flow once we have achieved the full impact of the stabilized rate of 14. Moving thirdly to the wide-body segment, the A330 is now stabilizing at a rate of around 4. For the A350, we continue to target a rate of 12 in 2028, hence nearly doubling the number of deliveries in four years. Florent, I think, explained to you very clearly what are the specific supply chain challenges, specifically with Spirit and the Section 15, and how once we own the business, we will be able to manage a successful ramp-up.
Now, looking at the profitability, let me just recall that both programs individually were back to break-even in 2022. To go further and to increase the profitability, we need higher volumes and to stabilize at higher rates. We are confident that once we integrate Spirit and once we converge to Rate 12, that EBIT pre-R&D will reach the level of profitability the wide bodies generated prior to COVID. Now, coming to services, I hope that we were able to give you some color on that part of the business, and Christian has shared his ambition with you to reaching EUR 10 billion of revenues in 2030. Let me clarify once again that there are two parts in services that we group together. First of all, it is what we call trading services.
Typically, we're providing spare parts, training, modifications, digital solutions, et cetera, et cetera. Secondly, it also contains our aircraft manufacturer obligations of providing technical data, answering queries, or addressing issues to ensure that they operate as promised throughout the lifecycle. Those are obviously services that come with a very low margin. What Christian is referring to is that we want to grow in our trading services, which have a very, very high margin, and therefore, profitability-wise, services were severely impacted during COVID after what it recovered, and we are currently operating at a rate of around mid-single-digit return on sales. What we expect to generate is a mid to high single-digit profitability in the midterm for both segments together. I think that is very important to understand.
Now, when it comes to the divisions, and again, you have it here on the slides, Airbus Helicopters and Defence and Space already provided insight in their ambition. I would just like to reiterate that the transformation of Defence and Space is on track and will contribute to the future profitability to the group. Mike shared with you the ambition is to cross the EUR 1 billion EBIT line in 2028. The same is true for Helicopters. They are on a very, very good trajectory already with a stabilized return on sales of over 10% already today. We will continue, and they will continue their steady growth trajectory as well, crossing the EUR 1 billion EBIT line in 2028, thereby contributing to the group with that number.
If you look at the impact from FX and hedging, obviously, it's very difficult for us to predict the FX rate going forward. We have seen a lot of volatility most recently in the market. I will come back to hedging in a minute and to guide you through our US dollar coverage policy. Coming back to our trajectory, as you can see, we have seen several levers that will drive our profitability up, and we will continue to invest in a targeted manner. When it comes to R&D, we expect to remain in the same order of magnitude in percentage of revenues, somewhere in the mid-single digit %, and hence, we will continue to see an increase in the absolute value of our R&D spend.
If we now turn to the longer term, more to the right-hand side of the chart, and I hope that Mike, Bruno, and also Christian and Florent were able to indicate that, we do see that there's more to come, and you've seen that we are well-positioned on the military side and on the service portfolio as well as the joint ventures that we have. On the commercial aircraft side, we will see the full rate potential of each of our aircraft families, and we will stabilize there for some time, sometimes meaning years. This is when we will get the full potential and the efficiency of our industrial system and the supply chain translating into further profitability upside. In addition, we foresee pricing upside progressively materializing from the end of the decade, starting with the wide bodies.
This is the result of the strong commercial positioning highlighted by Christian, and as you have seen, not only in wide bodies, but also, of course, in narrow bodies. With that, let me be brief, but still give you some views on our dollar exposure. First of all, you will recognize the graph that you see on the slide. As at the end of March, our coverage portfolio stood at $82.1 billion with an average blended rate of $1.21. Let me just elaborate a little bit about our coverage policy and guiding principles. First of all, you might know that more than 70% of the company's revenues are denominated in US dollars, and we are therefore exposed to US dollar risks and the exchange rate.
Our goal is obviously to minimize the impact on EBIT, and we are first of all achieving this through what we would call natural hedging. That means trying to incur a big portion of our cost also in dollars. In the last few years, we have managed to keep around 60% of our US dollar exposure naturally hedged by also having a US dollar exposure to our cost. For the remaining part, we cover it over a multi-year horizon by using corridors to hedge progressively, which allows us to be flexible and to also capture market opportunities and trends. As we, of course, ramp up our commercial aircraft business, we expect that the US dollar revenues will continue to increase, and thereby resulting also in an increased US dollar exchange rate exposure.
However, what I would clearly say, we will not necessarily increase proportionately the size of our hedge book. We do think that currently we're sufficiently well hedged, and we will make sure that the balance between the risk and the opportunities, and more specifically also the cost of the hedging that we will incur, will remain in sync. In that sense, we are continuously looking for optimizations in our hedging strategy. One of the things that we will introduce in the near future is also hedging through options. You have that on the right-hand side of the chart. More specifically, we will use so-called zero-cost collars because our view is that this might provide a further opportunity to be able to hedge the risk at a more favorable cost of our hedging book. Do not be surprised if you see that coming up.
Now, what does it all mean in terms of cash and cash conversion? As a reminder, we define cash conversion as the net income to free cash flow before customer financing. You know that our target is a cash conversion of one over a five-year year horizon. That will be the case going forward, so I can fully confirm that we have this objective. Now, let me first of all look at our past performance and remind you that over the last three consecutive years, we managed to achieve a cash conversion above one, supported by the strong order momentum that we had across all businesses, as well as the favorable working capital contribution. I think this is, generally speaking, a very remarkable achievement that we had managing a good cash conversion at the same time ramping up.
Now, looking forward, we reiterate our target to fully convert the net income into free cash flow over a five-year horizon again. I would just like to detail some puts and takes that will impact our cash flow evolution in the future. Let me start by elaborating on working capital. As we progress on our ramp-up trajectory, the inventory will continue to grow before stabilizing as we get closer to the plateau and look at reducing inefficiencies. First of all, we have to achieve these rates before we will target inventory reductions. I think, given the supply chain situation, that is a very sensible approach. On the other hand, the ramp-up also has a mechanical positive impact on trade liabilities as well as on PDP collection.
If we move to CapEx, we expect it to continue to increase in 2025 to support our industrial ramp-up before it will stabilize from 2026 onward in absolute terms as we get closer to our full rate potential. Therefore, it is expected to remain significantly higher than D&A in 2025, as in 2023 and 2024, by the way. This will then gradually taper off and get closer to D&A as we move into the next couple of years. Finally, let me just give you some hints about the cash dilutive items that probably are well known to you.
First of all, on the A400M, and as already mentioned by Mike, I would like to confirm that we expect to be more or less cash neutral in 2025, and it should start to be at least slightly cash accretive starting in 2026, and then will gradually get better as we move into 2027, 2028. On the A220, as for the EBIT, the free cash flow impact will also be neutral once we have the full impact of the Rate 14. The cash dilution, thirdly, due to the space charges should dissipate within the next couple of years. Finally, we talked about Spirit. As previously communicated, the integration of certain Spirit AeroSystems work packages will also be a negative on our cash conversion, at least in 2026 and 2027.
Overall, these cash dilutive items will have a high triple-digit negative impact in 2025, but will then be tapering off in the next couple of years until they all become neutral. Talking about Spirit AeroSystems, as we are nearing the closing, which we are envisioning for Q3 of this year, we are carefully assessing with Florent the required investments to turn around these work packages that will then support the ramp-up for specifically the A350, but also for the A220. Overall, we consider our ability to achieve a cash conversion of one, despite significant growth in revenues and earnings, as a key value driver, and we will therefore make every effort to secure that we are on the same good trajectory as in the past years. That, of course, brings us to the question, not only cash generation, but what is our use of cash?
I would like to share with you the systematic how we think about cash deployment. First of all, let me say that our primary objective when it comes to capital allocation is to keep a disciplined, balanced capital structure that enables both resilience and optionality, while at the same time providing attractive shareholder returns. Our solid past cash generation, coupled with a relatively low level of gross debt, is reflected in our strong credit rating. As you can see on the left-hand side, we have defined three different buckets that are ranked by order of priority from the top to the bottom. I will start with organic investments, which can either be in the nature of R&D expenses or capital expenditure.
We are firstly supporting the continuous enhancement of our existing products and services to maintain best-in-class operability, and we're notably investing in the ramp-up across all the programs. We're also focusing on our efforts to incremental developments inside our existing portfolio. For example, the XLR and the Freighter are good examples. Finally, we're continuing to invest into digitalization and maturing the technology bricks that are needed for the development of the next generation aircraft. Therefore, in absolute terms, as I explained earlier, our R&D expenses are expected to continue to increase beyond 2025 in line with our revenues in order to support our ambition for the future.
Let me precise that we have obviously not yet entered into the phase of the really high investments that we will need to spend for our new programs once we have taken a decision to start the program development. When it comes to capital expenditure, as mentioned earlier, we expect to see it stabilizing in absolute value as we get closer to the targeted production rates. In a nutshell, with a view to secure the ambition we have set ourselves for the future, we will continue to invest organically in our business as our number one priority, but in a targeted and very disciplined manner. Secondly, let me move on to shareholder returns.
Let me recall that since December 2013, we have demonstrated our commitment to our shareholders with a dividend policy targeting sustainable growth in the dividend with a payout ratio of 30%-40%. In addition, after crossing the EUR 10 billion net cash that we have defined, which we crossed in 2023, we distributed special dividends during the last two years, and that was to underscore our commitment to growing shareholder returns going forward. For the future and going forward, we aim at sustainably increasing the dividend per share in absolute terms, and hence we decided to increase the upper end range of our dividend policy. We are moving it from 30%-40% in the past to a new range, which we define between 30%-50%.
Let me be very clear, for us, the increased upper range of our dividend payout range provides, in my view, a more structured approach to a steady and predictable growing dividend in the future. That is what we want to achieve with that. Let me also say that on top of our regular dividend, and as we progress on our growth trajectory, we will also consider further actionable tools to return cash to our shareholders. I always talk about there are more tools in the box that we have, such as the special dividend and also a share buyback program, tools in the box that we have for the future. With that, let me come to the topic of M&A and conclude on the use of cash. Let's have a look at our M&A activities.
Although we do not see today any major gap in our current portfolio, we leave ourselves the option to grow externally through targeted bolt-on M&A transaction. Our strategy here is to focus on positive NPVs and target the transactions, which could accelerate our roadmap in terms of digitalization, cybersecurity, and services. For example, we recently completed the acquisition of Infodus that Mike mentioned, which provides us more insights and more capabilities in terms of cybersecurity. We acquired Aerovel, which is an uncrewed aerial system, and we have a stake in Aubert et Duval, which is a more defensive move on the supplier side. You can see the range of things that we're doing is quite wide, but they all are bolt-ons in nature.
Of course, let me say that we're continuously screening our portfolio to be sure that we're fully aligned with our core activities. Therefore, put differently, I do also not exclude disinvestments if we feel that they're not at the heart of what we're doing. When it comes to the European consolidation in the field of space, Mike talked about it. As you know, we are engaged in non-binding exploratory discussions to identify potential areas of collaboration. Given the complex nature of the project, we do believe that it will take some time, and there's, of course, no guarantee that the things will actually materialize. To conclude with the financial part, let me say that we are pursuing profitable growth in the years ahead.
It is supported by the commercial aircraft ramp-up and the growth trajectory for each of the Defence and Space and the Helicopters divisions. We have a clear ambition to cash conversion of one over a five-year horizon, and we have a clear commitment to increasing shareholder returns. This is why we have increased the dividend payout ratio from 30%-40% to 30%-50%. Also, beyond that, longer term, we have a high degree of confidence to deliver even stronger earnings and cash flow growth. We think we are exceptionally well positioned with respect to European defense. We are of the view that once we stabilize our production at a stable rate that I have indicated to you, this will give us the opportunity to further leverage the abilities of the company and to drive out inefficiencies.
Therefore, we do believe that even beyond 2028, which was a little bit the focus for today, we have great opportunities for further growth and further profitability increase. With that, I think I would like to hand it back straight over to Guillaume before we then move to Q&A. Héllèn, is that correct?
Absolutely. Before we move to Q&A, you can stay on stage if you want. Before we move to Q&A, I would invite Guillaume back on stage for some concluding remarks.
I will be brief in my remarks. I think that was a good overview of what we're doing and precise words from Thomas on financials. First, I'd like to say we really want to remain true to our pillars because they are the basics of what we're doing: safety, quality, integrity, compliance, and security.
Actually, we live in a world that is more and more challenging, hostile, fast-changing, unsecure. It is our responsibility to focus on protecting what we are doing, protecting our customers, protecting people who fly or depend on our products. That is really something I take as my own priority. Safety is my chief priority every day. We are in a fast-changing, uncertain environment, as we said, and it comes with plenty of risks and also plenty of opportunities. We have to navigate them all. Obviously, on commercial, the trade situation is very dynamic, creates reasons for us to adapt, to try to be agile, to have a short-term focus on finding short-term solutions, but as well preparing more long-term options for what could come out of this situation.
We believe that there's a strong demand that is here to stay, that we have the right products, that we've put the boat on a stable trajectory, and that's what we're focusing on delivering. That was the presentation from Christian and from Florent. On the opportunity side, obviously, defense. I will not say that the security situation of the world is an opportunity, but when it comes to business, we want to be here to propose the right products, the right services in a fast-changing European environment that creates opportunities for us to serve, to offer products, and to make value out of it. We're in a turnaround situation for defense and space, and indeed, we are increasing the number of employees.
We are recruiting as well on Defence and Space, but we're cutting a lot of jobs, and to some extent, we are reducing headquarter jobs or central function jobs to support direct jobs creating value on our programs. The team is committed to this. We are building resilience. We're working a lot on different scenarios, and we think it's difficult to give a prediction and give forecasts, especially when it's about the future, as we say, in this environment, but still we have a plan. We have a plan. We follow the plan. We test our plan. We onboard our suppliers and partners with us to maximize the likelihood of delivering on the plan for a reasonable range of not too unlikely scenarios because it's a lot about preparing for things we know and for things we don't know, for risks that are identified, but also for unknowns.
We put a lot of resilience, including the hedge book or many other ways of doing it, to be able to deliver on our commitments, the commitments to our customers, to our partners and suppliers, to our shareholders, so that the company continues to be a reliable company. We want to be known for people who say what they do and do what they say. That is maybe just on this conclusion that I would like to hand over to Hélène to take questions from the room.
Absolutely. Thank you very much, Guillaume. Now time for our last Q&A session of the day. That will be a little bit longer than the two previous ones. Looking at the time, I think we can go for probably half an hour Q&A and then conclude. Perhaps they have no questions.
Could be.
No. Okay. I am trying to switch a bit.
We have a question from Milène in the middle over there, and then I move back to the center.
Thank you. Milène Kerner from Barclays. Thank you for the presentation. Two quick questions on financials. First one on your slide 48, you did not actually mention inflation. You have restructured de-escalation clause in the last two years. How should we think about inflation, medium and long term, please? And then on CapEx, you mentioned that you are going to stabilize from 2026, but you still spend 50% more than your competitor. I mean, how should we think about this? Thank you.
On inflation, we have clauses in our contract that, of course, adjust the prices of the aircraft according to the development of the inflation, and we are protected both against labor cost inflation and material cost inflation.
What we have introduced with the experience of COVID is so-called hyperinflation clauses, so that also for very high inflation developments, they should provide for a better protection. It's never perfect, but I think they were good already, and they are better after the learnings that we made. We had quantified in the past the negative effect of inflation on a yearly basis with roughly EUR 200 million negative. That was in 2023. We said in 2024, it was less than that, and 2025, again, should be less of a negative impact than what we had in 2024. We're moving into the, I would say, double-digit space of a negative remaining impact that is not covered by the contractual protection that we have and that we have to digest. It's actually coming down.
Therefore, we think in the grand scheme of things, inflation is something that should play a rather minor role because the contract protection that we have should largely compensate for the inflation that we incur in the market. In terms of CapEx, as I said, we are still significantly above depreciation amortization today. It will get closer to that number and essentially stabilize. I would not specifically compare it to our competitors because then I would have to make assumptions what they are exactly doing. We will stay at the level that we have, and we think it's the right one because it's the basis for the future profitable growth of the company to invest in not only our infrastructure, the files that we're building, but also, of course, the products.
Therefore, we think stabilizing it at the current level, which admittedly is much higher than D&A, is the right thing to do for the near future.
I think we had a question from Ben. We take David, and then I see Doug. Ben is on the first row. Sorry.
Hey, guys. Can you talk a little bit more about the wide-body profitability comments that you made? A350, 12 a month. You said getting back to pre-COVID wide-body profitability, but wide-body was not very profitable pre-COVID. It was break-even in 2019 on 350, and 330 profit was pretty weak because rates had come down so much. I would hope it is better than that. I think people in the room would hope it is better than that. Can you talk a little bit more about the wide-body and some of the moving pieces that we should see there?
Thank you.
What we are seeing is currently, obviously, the A350, we are only delivering at a relatively low rate, 55 aircraft in 2024. It will not go up significantly in 2025. I think we warned you for that. What I tried to indicate is we will see a very, very steep ramp-up for the A350 once we have Spirit under control. Therefore, yes, I would agree with you. Both programs are individually profitable, and we will see with a strong ramp-up specifically on the A350 a significant ramp-up, a significant increase in profitability. Yes, we should at least see what we had pre-COVID, if not much better than that. I think it is too early to say at this point.
It's a trajectory that is slightly difficult to predict, but currently, we're very happy with the pricing that we're receiving on the A350, especially beyond the year 2028, where pricing should be an additional positive factor on the profitability ramp-up. I think there's definitely more to come.
We have a question from David on the second row.
Yeah, thanks. One for Guillaume and one for Thomas, please. Just want to go back to the session on operations and production where the gentleman said production rates are at record highs on the A320. I mean, clearly, none of us are seeing that in the deliveries at the moment, probably even if we adjust for gliders. Just can you take us through the cadence of when your internal production is going to materialize into higher deliveries?
On the guidance, I mean, you've given us nailed-on guidance for Helicopters and Defence and Space, but really nothing at all for civil air. Just why is that the case? Why were you not willing to even provide a range of outcomes? Thanks.
Before COVID, we were coming to a Rate 64-65 on the A320. You remember just when we were hit by COVID? Today, we are targeting Rate 75. When you look at the upstream and what is already flowing into some of our plants, especially for long lead-time item in aerostructure companies, we are above rates at which we were pre-COVID. Second, at station 40 of the A320, we are running at rates which are indeed for several months in a row where we've not been before. You do not see it in deliveries because it comes later than station 40.
Indeed, we have a lot of gliders. If you adjust for gliders, we are not far from. What Florent said is what we see for station 40 is the way we are looking at rates. Indeed, we see that it is coming. When you combine the improved situation of procurement, of missing parts, let's call it, and the fact that the production sites plus the final assembly lines are coming together, we are geared for the trajectory that we have given to you, and that is the Airbus objective Rate 75 by 2027. That is basically it. We are happy with the fact that since end of last year, and we are mid of 2025, we are on the plan we had given to ourselves and to our suppliers. There is one issue that was mentioned before. We have all our eyes on this issue with CFM.
It's the recovery of the flow, as indicated by CFM and as reported by Florent. They have solved their core engine issues, the GE problem that was holding the material back. Now it's all about putting those parts together, assembling engines and delivering engines to Airbus. Believe me, we're putting pressure on CFM to get this done because that's the one thing that is holding us back.
On the second one, I was somewhat expecting that question. The key for us is that at the moment, we feel that the geopolitical environment, the general environment that we operate in, is very, very uncertain. Therefore, it's hard for us to predict a specific point in time because things are fluctuating very much. That specifically concerns the commercial aircraft business.
It's much easier for us to make a prediction for Helicopters, which are on a very, very stable margin trajectory, which are much less affected by geopolitical tensions, which are much less affected by the tariff exposure, and many, many other things that we see in the world. The same is true for Airbus Defence and Space, where we have a very, very clear turnaround plan, and the profitability is mainly driven by the internal things that we have in our hands in terms of improvements, in terms of restructuring, in terms of transformation program. Therefore, we're always very happy to give indications about the things that we do control. We're much more struggling to make precise predictions when we have exposure to things that we do not control. That concerns mostly our Commercial Aircraft business.
I think that is the explanation that I can give you why we feel much more comfortable for the two divisions. The swings for tariffs, whether you make an assumption or another one, and it is mainly Airbus Commercial, which is impacted by this, are quite significant. We have to take this into account.
We had a question from Doug, then Ken, and then we will have Pete.
Thank you, Doug Harned, Bernstein. Two questions, one for Thomas and one for Guillaume. I just want to do sort of one more round on the margins here because if I think back to what you have communicated in the past, you have talked about getting margins up to sort of those mid 11% pre-COVID margins.
Once you get volumes up to where we were pre-COVID overall for commercial and stabilize on that 75-month rate, you talked about some opportunities such as the XLR. My question is, should we think of anything different now? Do you have any more optimism on the ability to take margins sooner? The second question is, when you look at China and we're expecting there should be significant orders coming from China, how do the U.S.-China trade negotiations, which are quite dynamic, play into your discussions, if at all?
On the margin side, what I would clearly say is the things that we see internally are giving us quite a bit of optimism because of the mix that we have in the portfolio. As I said and indicated, it's shifting towards the A321 and the XLR, which are more profitable than the A320.
The pricing that we're getting for the A350, which has been very positive, and I think Christian reconfirmed that pricing is one of the key things in commercial, but of course, also in the other two divisions. Therefore, the things that we're seeing, yes, give us good optimism that we will not only achieve what we had before COVID, but can also exceed it. Against that is the things that we do not control. Again, then we're talking tariffs and the geopolitical environment. From the ingredients that we have in our portfolio, I would say we're more optimistic than we were before.
When it comes to the negotiation between the U.S. and China and also the crossover to other negotiations, that's really one of the areas of uncertainties.
We have no other option than to try to anticipate or create scenarios and look at what they will have as an impact to us. There is also the negotiation between Europe and the U.S. on trade. Indeed, this can have significant impact on the financial equation. What we need is certainty because short-term, we have to adapt to what we have. Mid-term, long-term, we can take decisions and significantly mitigate what the long-term impact of tariffs would look like. We need that certainty. Today, we do not have that certainty. That is an industry issue. As we said before, it is mostly impacting commercial. When it comes to China-U.S., U.S.-China, the potential implications are significant. Therefore, we need to have an outcome. We believe that we will continue to be able to deliver planes to China. In which conditions, from where?
What are the implications for our own production in China? This is something we can only speculate about. We are waiting for this to land somewhere. Depending on the landing point, we'll know for sure what we have to do, the time it will take. There might be also some opportunities on the long-term, mid-term, long-term. It's not all negative for us, but we need to know what we are against.
Question from Ken, then Ian, and then Christophe.
Yeah, hi. Ken Herbert with RBC. I just wanted to follow up on your comments on the narrow-body portfolio, XLR versus 321 versus 320. Structurally, as you look at those today, is there any reason margins or profitability on these aircraft are not better than they were pre-pandemic? How do we think about benchmarking the narrow-body portfolio relative to the pre-pandemic?
I guess also on the 321 XLR in particular, how is pricing there? You're enjoying a very strong position in the marketplace. Maybe margin differential there relative to some of the other narrow-body programs, please.
I would say the benefit comes from the shift in mix. We were getting a better margin, obviously, on the A321 than on the A320. You can see that in our backlog, it's continuously shifting from being two-thirds a couple of years ago to now 70%. We're really moving more and more into A321s and including the XLR. Therefore, the benefit mainly comes from the fact that the mix is shifting. On the XLR, we are in the early days, obviously. Therefore, the real margin potential will only come once we bring the XLR to a rate of around 10.
Currently, we're only producing, let's say, a couple of dozens of these aircraft. Therefore, the ramp-up cost that we currently have, because it's a very complex aircraft with three cabin design, etc., etc., is not yet fully coming through. The second effect really is the ramp-up of the XLR to a production rate of 10, and therefore, the efficiency gains that come with the industrial system.
We had a question from Ian, and then we take Christoph at the back.
Thank you. It's Ian Douglas-Pennant with UBS again. Just a question on price to start with. It's great to hear that you're increasing prices on the A350, especially achieving price increases on the A350. I'm sure a lot of us want to see that on the A320 as well. To what extent is your ability to do that dependent on interest rate trajectories?
Presumably, in fact, we've seen that lease rates have gone up materially driven by interest rates. Is that impacting your ability to price? Secondly, volumes just gone up. Secondly, on the next generation aircraft, can I just make sure I understand? I think there's been a change in Guillaume, your commentary around the timeline of that recently, and then you're shaking your head, so no. Engine selection in 2027. Maybe you could just help us understand what's been said there.
Maybe I start with the pricing on the narrow body. I would first consideration that we have in our mind is we are sold out until the early 2030s.
One of the things in our mind, of course, is a trade-off between how much more do we want to grow our order book, which means that you try to sell a product to the customer and only deliver it in eight years from today. It is not always easy to dial up pricing when you say the delivery time is very long. Therefore, it is a little bit a trade-off between how much more do we want to grow it in terms of getting security of demand in the book versus being a little bit more, let's say, transactional and selective and doing yield management of the slots that we have with a more shorter-term approach. I think we will not fundamentally change, but we think growing the order book and letting it go through the roof does not make a lot of sense.
I think that's the first factor. The second one is, I would say it's not so much interest rate driven. It's more the relative competitive situation. As you can imagine, Boeing is relatively or is quite aggressive on the 737. Therefore, for us, it is probably a question of competition in the field. Again, that speaks for us of not taking every deal way into the 2030s, but being a little bit more selective and transactional when it comes to specific transactions. I think it's mainly the competitive situation that makes it a little bit more complicated to increase prices in the very short term. Therefore, we have to be patient.
On the future of our product range, today, Airbus's main profitability driver is the A320 family.
It's quite an old product, albeit very successful, and we have modernized the products, including recently with the XLR, but the platform is a quite old platform. The production system is also relying on decisions and choices that were made a long time ago. We are projecting ourselves to the next decades with a successor of the A320. I have a lot of focus on preparing that next generation of single aisle. We are clear to our supply chain, to our partners on what we want to achieve by when, and we want to be ready for launch by the end of this decade for an entry into service in the second half of the next decade. This is not changing. We are very steady and very committed to this.
Could I have a mic for the gentlemen, middle section, last row?
Yes, good morning. Thank you for taking my question, Christophe Menard from Deutsche Bank. One question on R&D, actually. Thanks for the guidance on the increase. Do you intend to change the priorities in R&D between Commercial and Defence? Do you intend to spend more in Defence in the coming years? Can you also, beyond next generation of aircraft, next A320, what is the roadmap for other platforms in Commercial? The other question was, I mean, you have that capital allocation strategy around bolt-on, around dividend. Do you plan to also spend more on partnerships? You mentioned quantum systems. Is there more investment to come in technology startups to use your cash, actually? Thank you.
Maybe on the R&D for Defence, we might, we will probably spend a bit more self-funded R&D in Defence, but in the grand scheme of what we are doing, it's not significant. The self-funded R&D is mainly coming from commercial aircraft, and we made the comments before on the overall evolution of R&D that's mainly reflecting what we do on ommercial aircraft. In commercial aircraft, there will be a transition from what we do on upgrade of products to allocating the vast majority of the money to the next generation aircraft when we start the next decade. On the platforms, the A220 is a young platform, same with the A350. The evolutions that will come, that will serve the improvement of competitiveness of those platforms will be through incremental upgrades, not with new platforms. Actually, it's the same with the A330.
The A330neo has new wings, new engines, modified cabin, and we're happy with the modernity of the plane. We don't intend to introduce a new plane in that segment. We have, as well as you know, the transition from CEO to NEO for the MRTT, which is the military derivative of the A330 with a number of applications that we are looking at. It will be more in that direction than looking at a new platform. The only platform that we intend to renew from scratch is the A320.
Maybe on the partnership topic, I mean, the short answer would be yes. We're looking for more of these things where we can partner, take a stake in a company, cooperate, etc., etc. It's difficult to plan for it because by nature, it's always slightly opportunistic.
What I can tell you is it really goes both directions. We are looking actively for those partnerships because, as Mike said, the market is moving extremely fast. We're looking for small, dynamic companies with competencies that can help us, but it also goes into the other directions. They are actively approaching us because they do see that Airbus has a lot of technological know-how and knows how to put things then into practice. Therefore, I would say it is, as I said, a mutual interest to go more for these corporations, and yes, it's part of our M&A strategy.
Question at the back, Olivier. You have to raise your hand because sometimes I don't see with the lights.
Thank you. Olivier Brochet with Rothschild and Co Redburn . A question for Thomas on FX. You mentioned considering zero-cost collars now.
Can you give us a sense of the scale of how many or how much this could represent in your policy at steady state?
No, I think it's a little early days. We made an analysis that we think if we do some regression analysis in the past, it could be a product that helps us reduce our cost of hedging. That is what we're targeting with that. We have now prepared our financial systems so that we can incorporate also options and collars into the financial instrument set that we have and properly account for it. We will start with it in the second half of the year. We will then grow the volume, let's say, based on the experience that we make with it. I would not expect that it will make a major part of it. We'll slowly grow into it.
If you attach a single-digit percentage number to it, you're probably on the safe side for the next year.
There's been a lot of resilience in the room.
Absolutely. Last question with David Perry.
Yes, thank you for letting me come back. You're pretty clear about the Defence growth accelerates 2029 onwards, but roughly, what are you expecting from now to 2028 for Defence sales growth?
Sales growth. Let's be very clear. The sales growth will be relatively low until 2028. Why is that? Because it takes a long time before the political will, which has now, I would say, translated into financial means that have been freed up in Germany and Spain, but also in other countries, will flow into our order book. That you will see in the years 2026, 2027, 2028.
The revenue impact will kick in 2028, probably earliest for the kind of product, for the majority of the programs that we have. When you talk about the big programs and products that Mike mentioned, you will rather see it in the order book than in the sales line, I would say.
With this, I think this closes our Q&A session for today. Guillaume, thank you very much for being with us. I promised I would free you up on time to be back to the air show. Thanks a lot. Thank you to the extended Airbus teams for making this event possible. Thank you all for being with us. We are also now saying goodbye to our connected guests. Thank you for being resilient as well with us this morning. Quick announcement. Our next road show is planned just after Q2, early August.
We will be happy to see you at this occasion again. In the meantime, as always, do not hesitate to reach out to Olivier, Victoria, or myself in case you have any questions. Enjoy the air show, have a safe journey home, and see you soon. Thank you.