Hello, everybody. Thank you for joining us today, and welcome to this Airbus SE pre-Q4 2025 call. Before we dive into our pre-Q4 2025 communication, let me quickly introduce myself. My name is Jean-Christophe Henoux, and I succeeded Hélène Le Gorgeu as the new Head of Investor Relations on December first, 2025. As usual, this call is planned to last around 10 minutes, and it does not include Q&A. It will remain accessible on our investors' websites until our full year 2025 earnings are released. Throughout this call, I will be making forward-looking statements. I invite you to refer to our safe harbor statement that appear in our most recent disclosure presentation slides, published on October twenty-ninth. That safe harbor statement applies to this call as well. Please read it carefully. The purpose of this call is to assist you in the financial modeling of the Airbus Q4 2025 financial performance.
Our quarterly closing and audit processes are underway, and as such, we will only refer to information that has already been disclosed or is otherwise publicly available in the market. Any update to our guidance or forecast will be communicated through a formal announcement. Our quiet period begins on January 29, 2026, and our full year 2025 earnings release is scheduled on February 19, 2026, in the morning at 7:30 A.M. CET. Let's now start with the mechanical elements impacting our profitability on a year-on-year comparison for the quarter. To make it clear, all the statements I will be making refer to Q4 2025 versus Q4 2024. Starting with our commercial aircraft business, and with the usual building blocks.
On volume mix, we delivered 286 aircraft in Q4 2025, versus 269 in Q4 2024, meaning +17 aircraft versus the previous year, Q4. Thereof, +1 A220, +9 A320, +3 A350, and +4 A330. While we expect to benefit from some positive operating leverage, the shortfall against our initially planned delivery volume should result in a mechanical under absorption of fixed costs. Moving on to FX, and as per the nine-month 2025 disclosure, a stable average blended rate at 1.21 for our coverage portfolio was forecast for Q4 2025, as opposed to Q4 2024. Accordingly, the resulting financial impact is expected to be neutral on a quarter-on-quarter comparison. On recruitment, as previously mentioned, we continue to hire in 2025, yet at a slower pace than in 2024.
When it comes to inflation, as previously mentioned, we still assume a low triple-digit negative impact in 2025, but probably slightly less than in 2024, which, for the record, was around EUR 200 million negative. This headwind is expected to be in accordance with a higher volume of deliveries recorded at the end of a year. Regarding R&D, and in line with the previous statements made at nine months 2025, our R&D expenses for the full year are expected to be slightly lower than in 2024. On tariffs, as mentioned during our nine-month 2025 disclosure, we still expect the financial impact for 2025 to represent anything between EUR 100 million and EUR 200 million for the full year, of which the vast majority is expected to be recorded in Q4.
Last but not least, let me remind you that we did not record any non-recurring elements for our commercial aircraft business in Q4 2024. Let's now have a look at the performance in the divisions. Starting with Airbus Helicopters, we observed a similar volume of helicopters delivered in the last quarter of the year as compared to Q4 last year, and expect a rather solid performance on services. With regards to Airbus Defence and Space, as a reminder, a charge of EUR 0.3 billion was recorded in Q4 2024 to reflect update of contracts, estimated at completion or EAC. Only a part of this charge should be normalized, roughly two-thirds, I explained during our full year 2024 earnings release.
In Q4 2025, we expect the result of a division to be in line with the historical pattern of entire year performance and the midterm trajectory presented during the business update in June 2025. Moving to free cash flow before customer financing. Let me first remind you that the full year guidance remained unchanged despite the update of commercial aircraft delivery targets. Now, let me briefly address some elements impacting year-on-year performance. As with EBIT adjusted, free cash flow should reflect a higher volume of commercial aircraft deliveries. Nevertheless, the update made on our commercial aircraft delivery target in December should have an impact on inventory levels, along with planned inventory buildup to support the ramp-up. On the order front, we continued to observe a strong momentum in all divisions in Q4 2025, both on the civil and military markets.
With this, I would like to end this pre-Q4 call. Starting from Thursday morning, we enter into the quiet period, and therefore, we will not be able to answer any question regarding the Q4 2025 performance before our results are announced on February 19th, 2026, which, as you recall, will be in the morning. Thank you for your attention, and speak to you soon.