Here we go. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Very warm welcome to the 2026 Airbus Business Update. It's fantastic to see so many familiar faces in the room. On behalf of Airbus top management, we are delighted to host you today in London. This event is also broadcasted live, good morning to the participants connected from the U.S. Good afternoon or good evening to all of us from around the world. Before we start, let me go through few practicalities, starting with safety first. We've talked to the hotel management earlier today. There is no fire alarm test scheduled. If you hear the fire alarm, please follow the staff towards the nearest exit. Let's assemble outside of the hotel in front of the main entrance.
I also kindly ask you to pay attention to the camera in case you walk around during the session because the event, again, is broadcasted. During the presentation, also during the Q&A, we will be making some forward-looking statements. Please review the safe harbor statement that is displayed behind me and also accessible on the Airbus website. Furthermore, please note that we are in our quiet period ahead of our mid-year financial results next week. As a consequence, speakers won't comment recent financial performance of Airbus. Now let's have a quick look at our agenda for today. This event is planned to last two hours and will conclude at 7:30 P.M. U.K. time. We'll start with our CEO, Guillaume Faury, who will set the scene globally, handing over to our CFO, Thomas Toepfer, who will guide us through our financial outlook.
It will be followed by business perspectives delivered in the following sequence: first, Lars Wagner, our Commercial Aircraft CEO, Mike Schoellhorn, our Airbus Defence and Space CEO, Matthieu Louvot, our Airbus Helicopters CEO. Guillaume will come back on stage to deliver the final wrap-up, leading us to 30 minutes joint Q&A session. Let's get started. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage Guillaume.
Hi, everyone. It's a great pleasure to be here today with you at the Farnborough Airshow. Airshows are always an exciting moment for us for plenty of reasons. Aircraft and helicopters flying in the skies, opportunity to meet with customers, partners, suppliers as well. This year had a very good start yesterday. It looks like a very good edition. I'm very happy to be here and to be here with the team.
Of course, Thomas Toepfer, our CFO, that you know him well. Mike Schoellhorn, whom you know well as well. It's a pleasure to be, for the first time, with Lars Wagner. Lars, if you can stand up, the CEO of Commercial Aircraft business for the first time with us, also Matthieu. Matthieu Louvot, in charge of Helicopters, was formerly the head of strategy for Airbus. I guess he's known already. It's his first time that he's in this capacity as the head of Airbus Helicopters. Very happy to be with them, especially because they will be giving a lot of color and the bulk of the work is for them. I'm obviously happy to introduce and be in a position to share with you a midterm target for the company, for the group.
Also, the fact that we will go for a share buyback. We are today at Airbus in a place, in a market where demand is very strong. We have a level of visibility we've never had before. We've put behind us a lot of challenges, and we've cleared the skies to move forward. We think we're in a good place to give an outlook, to give a target for the midterm, a place we have never been before. We have a business that has shown resilience, that keeps going, keeps moving forwards, and actually in the different businesses we're in. You see on the slide that has not yet appeared, that you see already, that we think we enjoy a level of visibility we've not had so far.
Obviously, against the backdrop of the world as we know it, we are all experiencing a lot of changes and disruptions, but there are some midterm, long-term t rends, which are strong underlying trends. We are working in this environment for our businesses. We are also now having ticked a lot of important boxes when it comes to our ability to supply. Basically what I'm saying is we have a very strong demand. This is the case for commercial aviation, that's the case for Defence.
We've done a lot as well on Space. I will come back to it. We are now in a market where Space comes with a lot of demand, especially when it comes to Space for Defence. We keep moving forward with a helicopter business that is strong. Strong demand. We have a backlog of more than 9,200 commercial aircraft, but we have very strong backlogs as well in Defence, and Space, and Helicopters. We've had, in the past years, record order books supporting the growth moving forward.
The markets we are working in are strong, but our ability to supply has also made a lot of progress. We have invested significantly to be fully prepared to deliver in a few quarters at rate 75 for the A320. We have recently inaugurated the last of the 10 FALs which are fully designed to support the ramp up till rate 75 with a high percentage of A321s. All those 10 FALs are fully A321 capable. We are fully prepared now to assemble those aircrafts. The supply chain that was heavily impacted by COVID, and after difficult years of recovery in the post-COVID environment, is now in a much better place. You have seen through the deliveries that we have achieved in the first half of this year that we are progressing well, and we are progressing according to the trajectory we have given to ourselves.
We see that the level of preparedness, what we call the enablement of production, is also in a good place. We have closed the acquisition of Spirit AeroSystems end of last year. When we look at the make and the buy, we think, and we observe we're in a good place to deliver on this very strong demand that I was mentioning before. We've done also a lot in our Defence and Space businesses. Defence has been, for Airbus, coming with challenges in the past. We've been discussing A400M for many, many years, and we had a level of profitability we were not satisfied with. A lot of transformation has been led by Mike, and Mike will say things about it.
We've also entered into a significant, a deep turnaround of our Space activities, and I'm very happy to share with you that we are ahead of the trajectory we have given to ourselves. Space is also moving forward in a very nice way. Helicopters, there's nothing new except that Helicopters keep growing profitably at a pace that is a good pace given the support from Defence. As you know, we are the world leaders in helicopters on the civil side, and we're also the world leader when it comes to civil plus military. Military is, for us, a good boost. We are, today, with a level of visibility that we have not enjoyed before, with a level of visibility on the demand side and on the supply side.
These things come well together, and this is a good moment for us to give midterm target for the group. We're very happy to share with you that we target for the EBIT Adjusted 2029 between EUR 12 billion -EUR 13 billion. We are a long-term company. We are where we are today thanks to the investment that have been made over the years and over the decades, and we continue to be a long-term oriented company. Thomas will share with you the fact that in those numbers, we have factored in the ability to continue to invest, and we have significant investment in front of us as we want to continue to grow and as we are preparing the next generation of products that are so important for our different businesses.
We've been able to operate so far with this level of growth, delivering a cash conversion of one, moving forward, we continue to see the ability to deliver free cash flow with a level of conversion of one compared to net results. Given the fact that we come with this level of visibility, that we look at 2029 with a team that will deliver on this growth and on those results, we have a level of visibility that gives us the opportunity that's been supported by Airbus Board to announce a share buyback of EUR 5 billion over a period of three years, starting later in the year. The midterm target, the midterm visibility comes also with the use of a tool, and we had said that there was a tool in the toolbox that we want to use now that is called a share buyback.
This is an outlook of what we are looking at for the years to come. There's nothing that can be done without leaders at the helm of the businesses. That's why I'm so happy to have the team we have at Airbus today. That is a very strong team, very committed, high level of skills, competencies, and solidarity in the team. They're here today. They will indicate, they will show, they will share with you important strategic elements of what we intend to do, where we are, why we believe in this. We are at a place and at a moment that is very exciting for us to see the fruits of a lot of efforts and commitments we've had so far to be in that place and to enjoy the visibility we have.
That's why we're so excited to share this with you today and to take the time to explain how we're going to do this and why this is something we believe in and we are excited to deliver. Thomas, I think it's now on you to come and give more color on this. Thomas, please come on stage. Thank you for coming here and sharing with the audience what it means, in terms of financials. Thomas, the floor is yours.
Thank you very much. Well, yes. Thank you, Guillaume, and hello, everyone. I'm really happy to be here. It's a pleasure to walk you through our financials for the business update and starting with our performance today, which of course is the anchor for the target that we will communicate. You remember in 2025, we delivered a highly resilient performance despite some intense headwinds. We delivered 793 aircraft yielding a strong EUR 7.1 billion in EBIT Adjusted and EUR 4.6 billion of free cash flow before customer financing. Capitalizing on our industry-leading value proposition enables our trajectory for future growth. Now turning into 2026, I would like to emphasize first of all, that our guidance for the year remains unchanged.
For the full year, we're targeting around 870 commercial deliveries, an EBIT Adjusted of around EUR 7.5 billion and a free cash flow before customer financing of around EUR 4.5 billion. I would just like to emphasize that achieving these 2026 targets will actually represent historic highs for both deliveries and for EBIT Adjusted alongside one of the strongest cash performances in our history. With this, we kick off our midterm trajectory from a position of strength. Now, I know that you and the market has been waiting for a commercial aircraft midterm outlook for some time, and today we're delivering that clarity with a balanced plan for the group that sets the ambition for future performance.
Our midterm plan moves the EBIT Adjusted from EUR 7.1 billion in 2025 to EUR 12 billion-EUR 13 billion in 2029. This would represent a profitability increase of around 75% looking at the midpoint in 2029 versus the 2025 EBIT Adjusted, which again, I recall was a historic high for Airbus. Looking at the components that make up that company target, you have them on the right-hand side. Commercial Aircraft steps up from EUR 5.5 billion to around EUR 10 billion in 2029. Airbus Defence and Space grows from EUR 0.8 billion to around EUR 1.3 billion in 2029, and Helicopters increases from EUR 0.9 billion to around EUR 1.2 billion. This trajectory is obviously underpinned by a set of base assumptions, which I would like to make very clear.
First of all, on the macro front, while we do not model a world which is frictionless, we do assume no major disruptions to global air traffic, supply chains or internal operations. We also assume that trade regulations remain stable versus today in our framework as usually excludes any potential M&A impacts. Secondly, you also have it in the fine print, our euro-US dollar currency rate is modeled at $1.22 for 2029. For your models, our FX sensitivity will mechanically increase step by step along our trajectory as deliveries ramp up, reaching ± EUR 250 million EBIT impact per one point of dollar deviation by 2029. We have anchored our midterm targets in 2029 as this year represents the horizon where all our programs should be at their targeted rates.
Let's look at the specific program building blocks driving this trajectory, starting with the A320 family. By 2029, we expect the program will be operating at full rates, unlocking profitability through fixed cost absorption and positive operating leverage. This margin expansion is further supported by a favorable product mix with the A321 variant now comprising approximately 75% of our A320 family backlog. Secondly, if you turn to our wide-body programs, the strong market demand continues to drive momentum across both platforms. For the record, both programs reached break even post-COVID in 2022. First on the A350, as we scale to more than double our deliveries by 2029, we are restoring our trajectory towards structural margin expansion. As we drive that forward, let me highlight two near-term headwinds for the A350.
First of all, we will see a temporary negative impact from the initial learning curve on the A350 freighters. At the same time, our overall margin potential is still constrained by the lingering impact of the launch customer contracts, which is the second reason. Because of those two, the true financial, what I would call sweet spot for the A350 program, actually sits beyond the midterm horizon of 2029. Secondly, on the A330, our focus is on steady industrial execution to capture sustained global demand. While it remains a solid contributor, its mature life cycle naturally limits further cost reductions, making its margin expansion per aircraft structurally lower than the one for the A350. If you take the wide-body platforms as a whole, the combined profitability will surpass historical benchmarks, crossing the line of EUR 1 billion EBIT pre-R&D in the coming years.
Looking beyond 2029, we expect further acceleration in bottom-line growth as the backlog matures. On the A220, our teams are focused on reaching break-even on the path to rate 13, driven by ongoing improvements in our cost structures and scaling effects. Across all programs, we are leveraging all possible profitability levers, and beyond volume, we are actively focused on value. Given the visibility that our backlog provides, the financial upside of these efforts will materialize in a few years, and Lars will, of course, expand in a few minutes further on the topic. Complementing the program building blocks, we are targeting EUR 10 billion in commercial aircraft services revenues by 2030. Alongside this, we now expect to cross the line of double-digit profitability for services in the midterm.
Importantly, this is an upgraded target driven by efficiency and profitability improvements we have made across the business. Just to clarify what is the services business, the segment is made up of two parts. The first one includes our highly profitable trading services, such as spare parts, training, and digital solutions. The second covers our core support costs, ensuring that the aircraft operate as promised throughout their life cycle. I would like to turn to our divisions, starting with Airbus Defence and Space. The division's comprehensive reorganization and operational turnaround have already yielded tangible financial results. In addition, the business is currently leveraging strong Defence momentum in the market, which is reflected in our record order intake, and we are sharply focused on converting the strong demand into incremental margins.
Moving to Helicopters, the division continues its strong performance while advancing its industrial transformation to capture broader market growth. Like Defence and Space, Helicopters is well-positioned to capitalize on military exports. Going forward, for Helicopters, its profitability trajectory will be driven by three factors, the ramping up the product portfolio and cost optimization, secondly, expanding the services business, and thirdly, capturing the Defence upside. We are encouraged by the commercial acceleration and enhanced competitiveness of both divisions, and this sustained momentum will deliver a combined EBIT Adjusted of around EUR 2.5 billion by 2029, providing a diversified pillar of profitability to the company. Simultaneously, we are making targeted investments in our future.
As we said last year, R&D continues to remain stable in the mid-single-digit range as a percentage of revenue, meaning the absolute spend will grow, trending towards EUR 5 billion per year by the end of the decade. This funding supports continuous platform development, next-generation technology, and proactive life cycle management. Crucially, we are pairing R&D with strict internal efficiency levers, such as procurement optimization and digitalization, to ensure our margins remain structurally protected as we grow. Let me quickly speak on FX. As I said, our 2029 target incorporates a known headwind, which is shifting from the $1.19 blended EBIT rate that we have seen in 2025 to $1.22, which is the baseline assumption for 2029. To be very clear, the $1.22 is a working assumption based on today's market conditions and our current hedge book.
As mentioned earlier, macro shifts can certainly impact the actual rates, meaning the $1.22 assumption could naturally evolve as we go. In terms of hedging, I would say while we are rather well covered in the short term, we are proactively managing the outer years, looking for the right balance between locking in rates while at the same time reducing hedging costs for the company. These parameters underpin a disciplined approach to value creation and diversification of our profitability levers. As we scale our operations to cross the 1,100 delivery milestone and surpass the triple-digit revenue threshold, we project an EBIT Adjusted of EUR 12 billion-EUR 13 billion in 2029. Looking ahead, as deliveries trend towards a steady cadence, we plan to shift the focus of our annual guidance to core financial KPIs.
This approach, so focusing on core financial KPIs in terms of guidance, better reflects our broader revenue base, which extends well beyond commercial aircraft deliveries only. I want to be very clear, and for the avoidance of doubt, this transition in terms of guidance will not apply for 2026. Furthermore, commercial aircraft deliveries will still be provided as an underlying assumption and reported on regularly, so that we are ensuring that the market visibility remains completely unchanged in terms of our delivery trajectory. Turning now to how these earnings translate into cash. As a reminder, our cash conversion is defined as net income to free cash flow before customer financing. During the last four years, our execution has yielded a cumulative cash conversion of around 1x, this strong track record was supported by robust order momentum across all businesses and a favorable working capital contribution.
This was a major achievement given our intense phase of industrial acceleration. Looking forward, our ambition is to sustain a high-quality cash conversion ratio of around 1x over a five-year time horizon, while increasing, of course, nominal free cash flow generation. Let me walk you through the key puts and takes that will drive this cash generation moving forward. The profitability upside we outlined earlier will translate directly into cash. Alongside this, unlike most industrial companies, we have the capacity to fund our growth without deteriorating our working capital, and this is primarily due to our predelivery payment scheme, which naturally finances our inventory needs. As a result, we expect working capital to remain neutral over this projected horizon.
On CapEx, going forward, we project a moderate increase, driven notably by the need to support our industrial ramp-up as well as the continuous upgrading of our industrial system. Ultimately, this free cash flow generation supports our commitment to disciplined, balanced capital allocation, and it secures our operational resilience, preserves strategic optionality, and ensures we continue to deliver attractive, consistent returns to our shareholders. With this now to capital allocation, where our priorities remain exactly as we outlined last year, rooted in strict discipline. That means organic investments to support future growth always comes first. Then comes our commitment to growing shareholder returns. Finally, we maintain the flexibility to accelerate growth through targeted bolt-on M&A. Anchoring this entire framework is our unchanged policy on our net cash balance, which we will maintain at levels consistent with recent years.
Because of our strong financial trajectory, we believe it's now the right time to accelerate shareholder returns. Therefore, we are launching a EUR 5 billion share buyback program to be executed over a three-year time horizon, subject of course, to continued shareholder approval. This marks clearly a significant step change. Over the past four years, we returned EUR 7.2 billion to our investors through regular and special dividends. With this new program, we're expanding that commitment. We expect total cash returns over the 2026-2029 period to represent around 60% of our cumulative free cash flow generation. Importantly, I would like to emphasize, of course, this share buyback is a targeted tactical move based on our current strength rather than a permanent recurring annual commitment. Thereby ensuring that we continuously drive long-term shareholder value while fully preserving our strategic flexibility.
To conclude, these strategic levers mark our transition into a value-driven phase for Airbus. As we scale past 1,100 deliveries and surpass the triple-digit revenue mark, our success is driven by disciplined execution across Commercial Aircraft, Defence and Space, and Helicopters alike. Our structural cash generation enables us to invest in our future while accelerating shareholder returns at the same time, and we're delivering on this through our continued commitment to a progressive dividend policy, which will be complemented by the EUR 5 billion share buyback program. These actions demonstrate our focus on consistent value. I would like to leave it here, and with that, hand over to you, Lars, for further details on commercial aircraft. Thank you.
Thank you, Thomas. Good evening. Back to the community of capital markets. Good to be back with you after one year, now with a different batch I'm happy to talk to you about the Commercial Aircraft agenda for 2029, and sometimes even beyond 2029. I thought about it, how do I structure that? With four elements. One is, where do I see the current demand? We're a long-term industry, so demand is not tomorrow, not next year, not by the end of the decade. We think about demand in 10, 15, 20 years timeframe. Second cluster will be, how do I fulfill this demand? What do I think about the supply? Third cluster is how do I think about profitability in our business? Then the fourth, as we are a long-term industry, is about how do we prepare the future?
Coming out of the Air show, there's a lot of demand. There's really a lot of demand on all product families. You see here the result of our recently published general market forecast that gives roughly a 4% CAGR on both the new aircraft market, but also the services market. We said we see a demand of 42,000 new aircraft in the year by 2045. That's probably around 60% new aircraft and 40% replacement of aircraft. We believe we have the right product, we have the right platform, and it's a superior platform. You see here what we have recently communicated in our rate trajectory. We are serving the market on the A220 with a rate ambition of 13 going into the year 2028.
We have set rate 70-75 because we had to delay our ramp-up of the engine supply, mainly from Pratt & Whitney. We set 70-75 by the end of 2027, then moving into the rate 75 shortly after beginning of 2028. We see, we're very strong on the market share in single-aisle. We see an even higher demand on the wide-body, where we usually have a smaller market share than our competition, we want to tap this market share, meaning we want to increase our market share. I look at the A330neo, I look at the A350. Both of them are targeted to be, one is a rate 5 on the A330neo in 2029, the A350, so far, we have set rate 12 in 2028.
We see the wide-body demand going up, we're actually investigating on both platforms how to increase the rate to supply the demand that's out there. That could go higher on both A330 and the A350. We have a superior platform. We're serving the market with a -900. We're serving the market with more demand now on the -1000. We have the A350 freighter having its first flight towards the end of the summer, we have flown the A350-900ULR, the ultra-long range, on the 2nd of June . Both of these new platforms will see their entry into service in the course of 2027. Adding up on the wide-body demand, especially on the A350, I see a possibility to increase the rate well beyond rate 12. That's what we're investigating right now, we'll communicate it once this has been decided.
More aircraft mean also more services, the services market also grows by 4% CAGR. We are going to have roughly 50,000 aircraft in the sky in 2044. That's Pax and freighter. The annual revenue in services for this year is supposed to be slightly north of EUR 300 billion. If you look at the lower bottom, we have an ambition of EUR 10 billion revenues in 2030. We're coming from roughly EUR 5 billion in 2025. Comparing these figures, it's natural we need to tap into this market. We want to use the position of our superior platform to sell more services to our customers. That's why we've given ourselves the ambition to double the revenues by 2030. Obviously, 2030, we don't stop. We want to tap into this market. We want to have an even greater ambition beyond 2030. Here we look into spare parts.
We look into operational excellence. We look into data, obviously. We are owning the data of the 15,000 aircraft currently out there, how do we transform the data into knowledge that we can sell that we can then offer to our customers with the aircraft or even without the aircraft? We will not do that just by organic growth. We have a radar on the market for M&A, one of the examples recently, we have acquired Unical. That is showing that we have ambition, that we have appetite to go into an M&A market, even significant M&A market, to fulfill these EUR 10 billion revenues. We're targeting as well a double-digit profitability on these services going into the next years. The ambition, as I said, is very high, even going beyond 2030.
Again, coming out of the Air show, you've seen the orders that we have signed yesterday and today. It's about execution. When I think about execution, I think about both. One is obviously output, but the other one is also the improved quality. That's what I'm hearing when I talk to customers. Last, you have to step up your output, but you have to step up your quality as well. I'm going to talk about it both because that's super important. That's priority number one for 2026 and beyond is to deliver on what the market's expecting. That goes with four subclusters. One is the supply chain resilience. We have invested a lot as Airbus into our own capacity to deliver.
I'm super comfortable with what I've seen after coming in at the beginning of the year, how Airbus Commercial Aircraft is invested into its own capacity to fulfill the rates I've previously said on the different programs. We need to embrace the whole supply chain, and that has been an off and on topic since COVID. We are looking into our supply chain. We are embracing them. We're looking into multi sources, and multi-sites for critical parts, because we've seen during COVID and post-COVID, that if you rely to a single supplier, a single partner, then sometimes you can get into difficulties. We're watching the performance, both financially, but also operationally of our partners and the suppliers.
We look strategically where do we need to source, where do we need to find multi sources, and when we have suppliers, let's make sure they have multi-sites as well, given the geopolitical uncertainties we have in the world, so that it's securing our ramp up. We're investing into a digital system. We called it Aero Excellence. That's both a kind of an assessment for our supply chains and multi-thousand suppliers we have in our network. I'd like to follow their value stream. Ideally, I connect that digitally with Aero Excellence into our systems, so at every point of their value chain, I have a visibility on quality and quantity.
As I said earlier, we are ramping up all four product lines, so it's super important to have the suppliers with us, to have them connected digitally, and to be all the time in a position to say, "We know what's coming. We know the quality, we know the quantity, what's coming." Guillaume talked a little bit about our own capacity. We have now 10 FALs operating on a single aisle, all of them A321 capable. We've seen that doubling in the U.S. We've seen that doubling in China. We just opened the last one in Toulouse. The FALs, and that's only single aisle what I mentioned, but also on the A350, also on the A220, and also on the A330. The capacity that we need is actually installed and we are ramping up the rates in that capacity as described.
It's not only the FALs. It's also the sub-assembly, the pre-files, the section as we call them. That is sometimes internal, that's sometimes external. That goes again with the supply chain resilience. One of the examples where we wanted to create a better reactivity and visibility and operational control is the former Spirit AeroSystems packages, where we're now investing into the five different sites, and specifically in the U.S. for the section 50 of the A350. We bring in our own people, and we make this operation an Airbus operation. We have the visibility that this section 15 is now delivering of what we needed, and going up the rate toward 12, and then later beyond 12. That's more the capacity and the supply chain. On the quality, let me start with operation excellence.
When I get the feedback from the customer, you need to step up in your quality. We have launched a so-called quality moonshot to reduce the non-quality in our own operations by 50%, five zero. That's 25% in 2026 and 25% in 2027. That, obviously, helps us. It's safety relevant as well, and it eases the entry into service for our products. For us, it's less resources, less rework, more profitability, and a delivery on time. Also, the culture needs to change towards execution. We're using our support functions to really think about what needs to happen that we can deliver basically four aircraft a day. That's a currency we're bringing in. If you want to go to the numbers of 1,000 or even beyond, and you divide it by the working days, that's a currency, so it's four aircraft a day.
It could be five, it could be three, but it's a lot of aircraft per day. We need to streamline the culture in our operations and in our support functions to make sure that we have lead time, that we have faster decision, that we have digital enablement to really be able to bring the aircraft out of the door to the expected time that the customer wants it. For that, we are automized. We have robotics, but we rely on our people. We rely on the skills and the competencies of our people. We are hiring people. We are hiring people ahead of the time to make sure they have the right skill set that is needed in the aerospace environment. We have an academy, an operations academy, where we bring in our people to be ready on the spot when we need them for the rate.
We are increasing their certification. We've seen a lot of movements across the aviation supply chain after COVID. We make sure we have skilled people. We call them Level 3 people, where they can actually self-qualify and self-attest their work reside. Level 4 would be an external quality provider. Ramping up the competencies and the skill set of our people to a higher level to make sure we satisfy both, not only the technical output from a capacity perspective, but also the improved quality and the culture to make it happen, to deliver on the amount of aircraft. You've seen demand, you've seen supply. How does that translate into profitability ambitions? Thomas and Guillaume talked about it. We have closed the year 2025 with EUR 5.5 billion on EBIT adjusted. We're targeting at EUR 10 billion EBIT adjusted for 2029. How is that materializing?
I've shown here four different elements. One is the additional volume. You've seen the rate figures, more volume is obviously beneficial for top line and for bottom line growth. We see the mixed benefit. The customers are asking for larger aircraft, for more capacity aircraft, for more longer range aircraft. You can see that trend both in the single-aisle environment, where we're now focusing more into the A321 as a larger aircraft, but even this segment more into the long range and the extra long range. You see the same trend on the A350 where we had the 900 and now there's a good momentum, probably even balancing between 900 and 1,000 for the longer range, longer capacity.
When we offer these longer range aircraft, that creates more yield and more benefit, more value for our customer, and inherently, that needs to create more value for us as the producer. I talked about the operating efficiency in the slide previously. That will kick in. The more we do it, the more we focus on it, that will kick in as well. Where we need to invest, what's hampering that a little bit, this figure is a post R&D figure. We obviously invest in the future as we're a long-term business. This one is EUR 10 billion for 2029, but I'm looking into the next decade already, and what I see materializing is more or less along the line what we promised here, additional volume, especially on the wide-body, especially on the services, as I outlined the ambition on services.
The mixed benefit will continue, we are investigating even more larger aircraft, stretch aircraft, as this is probably pretty public. We're investigating a stretch version of the 200, of the A220, and we are investigating on a stretch version of the A350, even larger than the 1000. All these three elements, more value-driven focus, will contribute to an even growing profitability beyond 2029. When I say post R&D investment into the future, that's a storyline of how do I see the future. I have three time horizons in mind when I think about commercial aircraft. On execution, we talked a little today. Enabling tomorrow, you see the incremental developments, as I said, the A350 freighter, the A350 ULR, the investigation on the feasibility on the A220 stretch, and also the A350 stretch. We're working obviously on the technology of the next-generation products.
We're investing into the wing of tomorrow and the fuselage material. We call the engine a technology brick. We call the connectivity a technology brick. All that goes then into launching next-gen single aisle. We have said here in the show as well, launching it when the technology is ready. Launching it towards the end of this decade, the entrance in service towards the latter half of the next decade. A technology brick, by the way, is also hydrogen. You have seen, roughly two weeks ago, we have announced a joint venture with MTU on a hydrogen fuel cell propulsion system. I'm a strong believer that hydrogen will play a role in our industry in the decades to come.
That's a technology brick that we also want to propel and giving it some time to investigate how this is working and how big the aircraft could be that's fueled by hydrogen and the fuel cell. Maybe let me close with that one. When I think about the next-gen single aisle, it's not only technology bricks, it's also the industrial setup that we need to be quickly at rate, to be as efficient as possible, as automated as possible, supported by robotics and AI. The third one is how do I rebalance the business model? It's probably a once in a lifetime opportunity to rebalance the business model and to participate in the aftermarket, in the three to four decades of aftermarket, and this goes together with the technology bricks I mentioned. All of that shapes the storyline and the commercial aircraft agenda for 2029.
When I talk about preparing the future, it's more 2035. Seeing all this opportunity, seeing all this growth, we have launched in the commercial ex-com team a 2035 growth transformation plan. How do we prepare this division to double its size going into the next decade? How do I want this to be? Then looking right to left and how do we structure the different streams of this growth transformation plan that's obviously supported by a lot of digital, a lot of technology, and artificial intelligence. In a short nutshell, these were the four clusters, demand, supply, profitability, and investing into the future. With that, I'm handing over to my colleague, Mike, for Defence and Space. Thank you very much.
Good afternoon, everybody. It's good to be with you again one year after the Air show in Paris, which was the last time that we talked about the midterm outlook for ADS. As Guillaume has already mentioned, quite a lot has happened since, and I want to take you a bit on a journey from what did we accomplish in 2025? What are we focusing now internally and externally to benefit from the growth that we're all seeing and witnessing on the Defence and the Space side? What does that lead to in terms of the major transformation that we continue of ADS, including the Space business and the joint venture that we aim to create with two partners in Europe? With that, let's look into 2025.
I'm quite proud of what my team has accomplished. Building on what I told you one year ago, we have had a record order intake in 2025 with EUR 17.7 billion. That leads us to a backlog of, in total, EUR 50 + billion, securing the growth for the future, but obviously we need to deliver on that growth. The EBIT result was much improved against the difficult year before. That was, let's say, under the cloud of the space write-offs that we had to take in 2024. EUR 798 million precisely, let's say EUR 0.8 or EUR 800 million in EBIT Adjusted. We have, as a result of the Space results, but also actually started before, formed the end-to-end business units with a full accountability through the whole business, in a major transformation, organizational transformation of the division. That has turned out to be very successful.
That has created the entrepreneurial ownership that we wanted to see. We have really taken the lessons learned from the Space mishaps before in terms of the discipline on the order intake, the quality of the order intake, the risk management of project management, the ability to deliver and to be ready to deliver when the project starts. All these have been very valuable and have been applied across the board into the whole division, and that has helped us reap the benefits that we're seeing today. That puts us in a good position and right on time to continue to capitalize on the growth in Defence and Space. Europe, as we all know, is recognizing Europe needs to be much better in taking care of its own security than in the past. That is obviously playing in our favor.
We have the widest portfolio in Air and Space in Europe, and that puts us in a good position. We're working on the right products for the future. Continue to propose best-in-class solutions will have to be part of our recipe for success. The Defence budgets are increasing. It doesn't look like the planet's going to take a different trajectory anytime soon in terms of becoming more peaceful. That obviously leads Europe and other nations that we serve to do more for Defence. With that, focusing on what we're doing precisely on a selection of our important programs, MRTT, you heard Lars talk about the A330. The A330 is the base for the MRTT tanker and transport aircraft. Meanwhile, of the A330neos, calling it the MRTT +, we are in the process of doubling the production.
That is the conversion capacity that we have to turn the civil green aircraft into a militarized version. We are continuing to ramp up on the Eurofighter, coming from a rate 10 per year a few years ago, aiming at more than a rate 20 in 2028, on a very good trajectory as we speak. We prepare a scenario for a rate 30 depending on continued export success, which is not a given, but is possible. On the UAS, if you see the air shows here in Farnborough or in other areas, you see how jointly with our colleagues from Airbus Helicopters, we have worked on a UAS, on a drone portfolio, and especially in the important area of the so-called CCAs, the Collaborative Combat Aircraft, the fighting drones, if you will, unmanned fighter aircraft.
This is something that we're banking on, that will be important for the future. One thing that people sometimes forget, because we talk a lot about products and the OEM part that we do, but we're also a big service company. Usually, our products go with the in-service support. In addition, we have services that are nicely growing, like Drone-as-a-Service, something that really a lot of organizations like police forces, border forces, Frontex, really don't want to own a drone. They want the service. They want the results out of it. FCAS is a complex story to be summarized in one sentence, but I'll try it with the decision that was taken in June to end the cooperation with Dassault on the manned fighter jet. Opens a new chapter for us, opens new opportunities for us.
Spain and Germany, as the two countries that we had represented in the old FCAS program, continue to be adamant about they need a 6th-gen fighter and want their own industries to play a leading role in that. We're positioning ourselves in that regard, and we're quite optimistic to get to a good solution. Space, I would say there couldn't have been a better time to fix the Space business and to be ready for the significant order and demand that we're currently seeing, largely coming, well, actually coming from both, from the institutional business. ESA has declared and has made available a record. A budget for the three-year cycle that they have. That was decided in Bremen at the ESA ministerial conference last fall. On the Defence side, you hear it all over the place. Europe is really doubling down with constellations.
You hear IRIS², you hear military constellations, you hear Earth observation. Even in the very institutional exploration business, there's significant traction. My smallest business, Connected Intelligence, creates the digital fabric that connects all these platforms, whether it's a satellite or a flying platform an aircraft, is very successful currently in the much-needed integrated air and missile defense. We're seeing lots of new threats that need answers for coming from swarms of drones, coming from ballistic missiles. It's being extended to the lower end counter-UAS and to the high end ballistic missiles that actually leave the atmosphere then come back. This is something that countries need to protect itself from, and that's where we play a major role in terms of the so-called command and control system.
We are one of the few providers in Europe that actually have a NATO-certified open and modular C2 architecture that integrates agnostically almost any kind of effector, meaning missile. That's a business that's really taken off. The other part in Connected Intelligence that finds it very difficult to satisfy all the demand that's currently happening is the Earth observation business. Whenever there's a crisis, people want pictures of that crisis. We scramble to deliver those pictures. We're quite good at it. We're thinking about increasing the capacity as well. All of this said, this is something that helps us to unlock more value going forward. You see the three business units on the left-hand side. This is our current structure. We have successfully created in the past two important joint ventures that Europe needs to defend itself. One is MBDA, the missile maker.
It is maybe the only way how we can create, as Europeans, scale at a European standard or level, if you will, because with the countries having vested interests in their defense companies, it is very difficult that there's just a normal consolidation happening. This is probably the best way how to create scale in Europe when each individual company in each country would be too small to compete against American and more and more Asian competitors. The other important joint venture is Ariane, our launcher, a company that we have a 50% stake in, and the other shareholder is Safran. I jump to the right side of the slide. This is what we want to create from 2027 on. We want to add a third major strategic joint venture to this.
You know it potentially under the nickname Bromo, which is not going to be the final company name, but that is the space joint venture that we want to create jointly with Thales and with Leonardo. You see that this leads to a significant revenue if you add all the three joint ventures together of about EUR 15 billion. It's really a strategic business that we're taking a lot of organizational measures also to govern that and to reap the benefits from these participations, including boards and strategic cooperation. If we then zoom in on the center of the slide, which is the remaining division of Airbus Defence and Space, it will be very much an air power division. It will be very air power-centric, meaning the military aircraft.
It will be, and you see it wrapped around the digital fabric, the data-centric solutions that we provide through the Connected Intelligence business will be part of that. We have a clear plan and a clear vision of where we want to continue and on a bigger scale, the transformation of ADS, specialize more, create the end-to-end accountability and the specialization that you need, moving even farther away from the old hodgepodge of putting everything in one bowl and then maybe not having the grip on the business as we want it. That leads me to my final slide of explaining a bit more in detail of what Thomas presented to you already. Last year, I reported to you the ambition to have a EUR 1 + billion EBIT Adjusted by 2028. I'm happy to say we are ahead of the curve.
We're now seeing that we could be, in 2029, at around EUR 1.3 billion. Some of you might ask, and I anticipate the question, is that with or without Bromo? My answer will be, it is robust against both scenarios. What is helping us in this is everything that I try to get across in terms of how are we working on the efficiency, how do we keep the discipline, how do we not grow at any price but keep our focus on selectivity in the bids? We want to invest very targetedly. The typical model in Defence is you get customer money to invest, you get early cash, then you can work with that.
That works for the most part, but in some areas, especially in the drone sector, where the things are moving very fast, we need to pre-invest, do that in a very targeted fashion, as I said. That puts us in a better position to win the business later on. We continue to work on the transformation of the business, of the competitiveness. We have kept our SG&A spending flat over the last years. We will try to continue that. That obviously is good for the percentage of the turnover in terms of SG&A and good for the profitability. The volumes will be going up, because we are geared to deliver on the promises that we made through our orders, and we don't see any relaxation anytime soon. With that, I'm basically done with my presentation, and I welcome on stage Matthieu. Thanks very much.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Last least, but hopefully fascinating, I will walk you through a few slides about Helicopters. Starting by the market, then going to the ramp-up and the execution, the profitability, and finishing by the future and the innovation. First, a few words about the market. The market for helicopters is civil and military. The military is bigger, roughly four times bigger than the civil. We are present, of course, in both with a dual business model, which has proven to be very successful for us. On the civil market, which is on the left part of this slide, we have a very large market share, roughly half of the market. It is in units here, but it is the same in value. We have a very wide range, which has proven to be very successful with the many customers we have.
You know the civil market, it is many segments. It goes from firefighting to oil and gas to air ambulance, police, utility work, and it is a growing market. You see almost 6% CAGR forecasted till 2031, because there is a positive trend in the commodities, especially oil which is also a big part of it, but also the governments investing more and more in their police services or ambulance services. On the military side, also very great success last year. Market share 28%. It is not the average number. It is a record number. Our aim would be, of course, to stay there for a while, but it will be a challenge because our historic market share was closer to 18%-20%. Nonetheless, we see a very good trend, thanks to a very large range as well. Mostly successful military versions for civil aircraft.
For instance, the H145M, which Germany has bought 82 executive units. The HIL, which is the H160M, the military version of the 160. France bought 169 of them. We have got a lot of success with these aircraft, and not only in our home countries, also on export market. For instance, the H225M, which was sold to the Netherlands, to Iraq, to Morocco. This military market, a bit more than 4% anticipated of growth. Actually, you might find the number a bit underwhelming, but the reference year here is 2025, which was a record year for bookings, not just for us, for the whole market. If you are starting from 2024, you would find 15% growth. If we keep the good numbers of 2025 and expand on them, it is also a very good market.
Our business model, you see it on the right, balanced civil and military, which is good because it is contra-cyclic, and when the military goes well, the civil might not or the other way around. I must say, no, the two trends are positively synchronized. A split between platforms and services, a big half for platforms, a small half for services, which is very resilient. Helicopters, they fly low. They absorb a lot of stuff when they fly close to the ground. And they have rotary parts, rotating parts, which require some regular maintenance, bit like engines, which is why services is a very important part of the business model and builds a lot of profitability and resilience to it. What is our ambition?
Of course, staying number one in the civil and parapublic market. I think we're in a very strong position to do that with a very large product range, ranging from 2 tons helicopters to 12 tons helicopters. Continue the growth in military exports. This year start successfully. You've seen the sale to Romania, for instance, of 12 H225Ms. We sold H145Ms recently to Armenia, for instance, or to Uzbekistan. Becoming a leader of uncrewed solutions. Not all uncrewed solutions, but it's drones, and it's also unmanned helicopters, which is why we took this word of uncrewed solutions. It's in the drones. It's rotary-wing drones, vertical lift of a certain size, which is the area where we're relevant with our skills. It's, of course, the unmanned versions of helicopters and the teaming between the drones and the helicopters. I'll come back to it.
Finally, number one in services. I would tend to say not only in the business, but also in the satisfaction of the customers, which is, of course, crucial to sell the platforms down the road. How do we plan to execute on our ramp-up? The ramp-up is a bit different from last numbers. Actually, it really depends on the platforms. One platform which undergoes a very strong ramp-up, and it's positive because it's a bestseller and a very profitable platform, it's the H145. You see it went from deliveries around 68 or close to 70 in 2023 to 120 this year, which is very large growth. The top end of that blue bar is close to 140 actually in the next years. We are doubling the production of that aircraft.
Of course, it means a large expansion of the production capacity and a draw on the supply chain. The supply chain situation is getting better. It was very difficult post-COVID. Now, most of the most difficult supplier situations have been solved. It doesn't mean, of course, there is no problem, but there is a steady improvement in the quality and including our own production. Perhaps we have more vertical business model than in airplanes. We produce ourself on gearboxes, or on rotors, or on blades, and we have invested in our facilities, in the quality system, in the digitization of our production, in a new facility, for instance, to assemble the gearboxes, which delivers very strong quality, steady quality, and allows us to ramp up efficiently the production. We're also expanding worldwide.
We open a new assembly line in India, which is very important, of course, to both expand our production capacity, but also to address the very large Indian market where helicopter sales are really taking off, military and civil alike. Very resilient setup. We increased our workforce. It's largely linked to engineering workload, I'll come to it. We have a global footprint. We have 10 industrial sites, but also an industrial organization that has been optimized a few years ago, where we have, like Airbus Commercial Aircraft, an organization which splits the work between the main European countries, which all build together these helicopters structures, main aerostructures in Germany, the blades and the gearboxes in France, the tailboom in Spain, and assembly mostly in France and Germany. We also have assembly lines in the U.S. and Brazil, and now India.
We upgrade our platforms continuously, which is why we have, for instance, this very large market share in the civil market. It has really accelerated in the last year. The ramp-up for us is also a strong ramp-up in engineering workload. We doubled the engineering hours in the last five years. This is due to very large military developments. I mentioned the military version of the H160 for France, and later for the export market. The 82 military H145 that we sold to Germany, also very large development. The upgrade of the Tiger, called Tiger Mark III, plus very large H225 contracts, such as the 38 aircraft we sold to the Federal Police in Germany, or the 16 aircraft we sold to the Netherlands. All these require a lot of customization.
Customers want to install their own systems, new systems on the aircraft, and that drives a lot of workload as well as the new developments. I'll speak a bit later about the H140. We have 13 product families when you include the drones. It's quite large portfolio, which requires a lot of constant care and work. On our profitability ambition, how will we achieve it? Perhaps I will start by the numbers. As Thomas mentioned, we were close to EUR 900 million EBIT last year. We want to grow this number to around EUR 1.2 billion. How will we achieve that? First, ramping up the production, I mentioned it, but also optimizing costs, and there are several ways to do that. Artificial intelligence will be important. It can really help us in software developments. I mentioned the large engineering workload.
This will really help in optimizing, for instance, the simulation tools to have lower flight test times and more efficient tests to automate the inspections, which are a large part of the production cost. Many ideas to optimize them, leveraging on the partnerships we have both with Google and Mistral AI. Support and services growth will continue alongside the growth of the market, very steady. We have very large market share, more than half of the accessible market of the service of our platforms. We plan to keep and continue to gradually increase it. A poor trend of the military market I was mentioning. We must invest. It's part of the game. We must invest in upgrades of our platforms or on preparing the next generation of platforms. I'll say a bit more in the next slide. It's the guarantee of the long-term success of the company.
The ramp-up in itself, of course, will help optimize cost by absorbing the fixed costs, which we'll contain continuously on the larger revenue base. If we go about where we want to go in the future, a few important themes of our innovation, our long-term future. Crewed and crew teaming and drones. All is important in there. Unmanned versions of our helicopters. Here on the show, we exposed the U145, which will be the unmanned version of the H145 for dull, dirty, dangerous missions. A very large market appetite for this. Of course, when you unman the helicopter, you also gain more cabin capacity, removing the controls. You can put much larger loads within the helicopter. A lot of interest for that program starting on the U.S. military version of the H145 and soon, hopefully in Europe. Also, H Teaming.
It's our teaming solution to team any kind of drone with helicopters. It can be launch effectors. It can be loitering munitions. It can also be observation drones. We created a drone center to be extremely agile in this development, which is a kind of separate entity, working with different development processes much faster, much more agile. They developed this teaming solution in six months, which was demonstrated in Singapore between this aircraft, the H225 that you see, and the Flexrotor on the top right corner of the slide. It has proven to be extremely effective, and we now can team with many drone companies to do that. We also have our own drones.
We have made acquisitions, the Aerovel company in the U.S., which is the Flexrotor you see here, and our own drones developed in-house, such as the VSR700, the Aliaca, which we recently renamed. We continue, of course, to invest in developing our helicopters. The H140 will be the newest light twin helicopter. It was unveiled last year at the annual helicopter show in the U.S. It has a very large order book already. A lot of expectation by the customers. It will be, by far, the most performing platform in its category. We have a much more efficient rotor and tail boom, and we have a larger cabin, which is important, especially for the medical services, which want always more room to take care of the patients or to accommodate larger patients. We have also NGNT and NGRC, sorry for the soup of acronyms.
These are the names of the new military programs for the future of helicopters in Europe. A few new helicopters. NGRC is the NATO project. NGNT is the European Union project. They will both converge to define and fund the next generation of military helicopters. They can be conventional helicopters, and there they can be an upgrade of the NH90 with more weapons, more connectivity, software-defined in order to upgrade the systems very fast, teamed with drones, probably with more endurance. This is one possibility. It can be perhaps a new conventional helicopter, clean sheet, or it could be high speed concept. Here we have unveiled in the last years and months a RACER prototype, which achieves very high-speed performance while keeping very good hover and stationary performance and very optimized costs for this concept. We are exploring them, exploring the space of possibilities.
We're doing R&T to mature the technologies in the last years of this decade before we hope for a full program launch in Europe, beginning of the 2030s, that will either upgrade or replace the NH90. Finally, operational optimizations. There is a lot of innovation in what we want to do. AI will be central here, and it will be both to optimize our processes, our development processes, our production processes, our maintenance processes, and to optimize our platforms, especially our drones, for instance. You can team one helicopter with one drone without too much AI. If you want to team a helicopter with dozens of drones, there you need AI. Our strategic priorities to conclude, it's at the bottom part of this slide. Customer loyalty. As I was saying, maintenance is an important part of the life of helicopter, unfortunately.
We need to be extremely good and continue to focus on improving it to keep the very large market shares that we have acquired. Innovation, I don't come back to it. It was the point of this slide. Continue to grow our market share in defense and security higher than what it was. I think we know we have the range both of manned and unmanned platforms to do it. Sustainability remains a priority. Sustainability is not only mitigation of climate change, it's also adaptation to climate change. Where helicopters, which are extremely essential for disaster relief, for firefighting, are key tools to adapt to climate change. We have a mission there. That's it. Thank you very much. Now I have the pleasure to give back the floor to Guillaume for a conclusion.
Thank you very much, Thomas, Lars, Mike, and Matthieu. Thank you for your attention. I think there was a lot of information and background on our different businesses. Again, we are at a point where the company has visibility on demand, visibility on supply, visibility on how to get there, and you've heard a lot from our CEOs. Visibility as well on the team to make it happen and visibility on the commitment. At Airbus, we like to say what we do and do what we say. That's not necessarily obvious in the current environment, but we are happy to come with an outlook that goes to 2029, with an outlook that is backed by strong backlogs. We have a level of certainty when it comes to what we have to deliver.
At a point where a lot of progress has been made, as it was explained earlier, on the make and on the buy that is required to deliver on those numbers. Having the possibility to have an outlook till 2029 and share that outlook in so-called midterm targets was and is for us an opportunity to use the share buyback to return cash to shareholders. We think that paves the way for a clear execution for all our teams and also for our partners and suppliers. We think we're in a good place here at Farnborough to look forward. It's honestly quite exciting to be working for Airbus in the current environment, where the demand for our products is so strong.
That gives a very strong sense of meaning, of belonging also into a community of customers, be it for the Commercial Aircraft business, for the helicopters and all the missions that are served by our products. Also in Defence in the current environment in this world that is fast-changing and unpredictable, not such a safe world as the one we have experienced before. That really gives a lot of meaning to all our teams on what they're doing, and that's a convergence of what we want to do in terms of targets. Also why we come to work every morning. With this, I'd like to thank you for your attention. There's been a lot of data and information shared.
I just want to conclude basically, wrapping up with the few figures that I think count for today, the EUR 12 billion- EUR 13 billion EBIT Adjusted that we are targeting for 2029, with a cash conversion rate maintained at 1x. As Thomas highlighted before, that's something we have delivered and we want to continue to deliver. The EUR 5 billion share buyback program over three years, that's in a nutshell, the summary of what the different businesses have as a plan and will deliver. I suggest we go to the Q&A, giving you the opportunity to ask your questions and try our very best to give answers. I would be happy to call on stage the speakers, Thomas, Lars, Mike, and Matthieu, and we will do our very best to address your questions. Now, J.C., I guess you are orchestrating this?
Yep.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Guillaume, for wrapping up those key takeaways, and thank you for the whole team to share those strategic and financial insights. We will start the Q&A. We have a solid 30 minutes ahead of us, plenty of time to answer to your questions. Before that, a few rules of engagement. If you want to ask a question, please raise your hands and give your name and institutions once you get the mic. Please limit yourself to two questions, including Q&A. Including sub-questions, sorry. Let's start and get the first question from the room. Ben, you want to start?
Yeah. Thank you. Can I ask two, on the A350, first of all, you mentioned you were investigating going beyond 12 a month. Can you talk a little bit more about that? What are the rates that you're considering, and when do you want to make a decision? Then Thomas, you said the sweet spot for the A350 is beyond 2029. What does the sweet spot look like?
Let me start with the A350. When I summarized, there's a lot of demand on the already existing platforms we have on the 900, 1000, on the freighter, on the ULR. We're investigating a stretch version. With that, comes a thought, how do I enable earlier slots? We see now that we need to be able to offer earlier slots to the customers. When I said it's a rate of beyond 12, significantly beyond rate, then you can do the math and it's not going to be 20, so it's somewhere in between. The decision, ideally, I would like to do it with Guillaume, with the board, in the course of the year, decide on a rate scenario.
I was not expecting that the first question when you give a 2029 outlook would be what comes beyond 2029, but you did it. No problem. Let me remind again, why is the sweet spot not yet in 2029? Because we have two things. One is, we have the freighter that is in its infancy, if you like, and secondly, we still have the launch contracts for the A350, and that will be with us until the end of this decade. I would say the sweet spot really comes in the 2030s, and I would say we can do significantly better in the next decade with the A350 than what we have today. I will not give you an exact number.
That is when we talk about the 2030s, but it's not an incremental ramp-up or the incremental improvement, it's a significant improvement that we can do with that platform.
David? Again, please stand up and say your name and institution, please.
David Perry from JPMorgan. First question for you, Thomas, if I may. You're guiding to a lot of profit and a lot of free cash flow. I'm just wondering why you decided EUR 5 billion for the share buyback and not something perhaps bigger. Maybe I'll ask Mike one. Could you just talk about your preferred options or what the options are now, for FCAS without Dassault? Thanks.
Let me start with the first one. We think it is the right balance, in terms of our capital allocation. You've seen that our first step was to step up the dividend policy from 30% to 50%. I think that gives us quite a bit of flexibility in light of the fact that also our net income will increase. Secondly, if you add on top of that for the next three years, the share buyback, as I said, that gives us a payout of roughly 60% of our cash flow that we're expecting. We think that is the right balance between the cash that we would like to preserve for investments and also for a buffer in the company, and at the same time, a 60% payout ratio, we think that is what the company should target for.
Lastly, I would say the share buyback, of course, gives us the flexibility to accelerate, decelerate, depending on how the environment develops. Therefore, there's always flexibility built in to react to how the environment will develop in the next three years.
Yes. On the question of the preference, I would say it's not only my preference that will decide on what might happen, but you need three things to align. One is you need the respective countries to want to work together, you need the respective air forces to want to work together, you need the industry to want to work together. My preference, I'm not going to give you a specific answer, but my preference does entail that we find a solution that gives Airbus a significant positioning in a 6th-gen fighter, in our Spanish and German footprint and setup. It will have to be something where we have the feeling from day one that the industry actually is pulling at the same rope in the same direction, and that will give us the, say, recipe for success.
There's a few options in Europe to work together. We're currently setting ourselves up to not lose time, to continue to do the work that we know already has to be done, and be open for others to join. You know that we have partners in Spain and in Germany that have also come together around the Berlin Air Show and declared that they're ready to support us in that.
Ross, you want to take the next one?
Thank you. Ross, Morgan Stanley. The first one on the Airbus target EUR 10 billion EBIT. Out with FX, where would you say is there the most conservatism baked in across sort of volumes, pricing, operating leverage, for example? Secondly, on the next-gen single aisle, the image of the aircraft on slide 18 looks like it has a ducted fan engine. Should we assume that you are becoming less confident on the merits of the open rotor? Thanks.
Should I start with that one?
Yep.
I haven't seen the image in the back of my mind, no, you should not assume something out of the image. We're investigating both technologies. You've seen us go live yesterday with a flying test bed for the RISE concept. I said this is one technology break that we need to mature, and we're investigating both of them.
On the question of conservatism, we always have to strike a balance between ambition and ability to deliver on objectives. I would say it's realist. It's something that is consistent with we say what we do, we do what we say, three or four years ahead.
Next question here, please. Doug.
Thank you. Doug Harned, Bernstein. Two questions. First one, going back to the A350 and looking toward that 12 a month rate. You talked about the longer term, in terms of getting from the current rate to that 12 a month, what are the hurdles you have to get through at this point? Second, if you look at the stretch for the A220 and the A350, presumably that requires a new engine. How do you think about the engine technology for that?
On the current rate, we are somewhere in the ecosystem, let's say between eight and nine. When I look at the path towards 12, I'm looking more or less into the supply chain, and the cabin environment, lavatories and galleys, linings. That's what we are currently short of, that needs to be secured. Embrace, as I said, we're doing with the supply chain. On the pre-fil, on the material, on the sub-assemblies, I don't see a risk to go to 12. We talked about Kinston in the U.S., our section 15, that has been an issue in the past. We had sent people. We're now progressing, we're performing. It's about the cabin interior supply chain where I'm after. On the 220, the engine is actually pretty good. The engine, the PW1500G developed quite well over the past two to three years.
We believe we don't need a new center engine. We can walk this A220 stretch with an improved but similar engine as we have it right now from Pratt & Whitney. I'm not concerned on the engine. It's a little bit heavier, the aircraft obviously, because it's stretched. That will limit a bit of the range, but the customers are very fine with that. More capacity, less range.
Sam, for the next one.
Thanks very much. Sam Burgess, Goldman Sachs. You spoke about A350, if I could just come to that. It sounds like your thinking on that is actually quite mature on the idea of doing a stretch, or moving to higher rates. If you made that decision, what would that CapEx commitment look like? Is that incorporated into the current guidance on cash conversion? Have you accounted for that? Secondly, just on engine technologies, you talked about the desire to increase aftermarket exposure and part of that being the engine technology brick. Could you just give us any color or sense what that might look like? Is that just a capital commitment to the next engine program or something different? Thanks.
Take the first one.
You want me to take the first one? Yes. First of all, to be clear, we have not yet taken a decision on the A350 stretch, but we're looking into it. I think it could certainly be a very interesting aircraft because it would be the reference in the market in terms of, I would say technology, but also size. Therefore, I think it could be in a very interesting spot for the customer, but also for us. I think you said it, the reason why the decision, of course, has to be investigated very carefully is not only the development work for the aircraft itself, but also what does it mean in terms of commitments for the production system. That is, I would say, slightly more complex. Therefore, we're looking into it very carefully.
Generally, the assumptions that we have taken in our midterm ambition for 2029, also in terms of the CapEx investments that we want to make, do comprise, let's say, the production program and the product portfolio that we want to develop. There is no precise decision, that we've built in some room left or right. I would say intellectually and conceptually, we should be able to cover sensible expansions of our product range and also of our, I would say, industrial system within the envelope that we have given ourself. That's the base assumption.
Ken?
Maybe on the second question. I, as far as I remember, didn't link it specifically to the engine. I talked about when I think about the next gen aircraft, I think about technology, I think about the industrial setup, and I think about the new business model. Right now, we are mostly exposed to a line fit, to OE, sales-driven company. There are a couple of players that are involved into a 30-year aftermarket exposure, and we're discussing with them how could the merge of this business model look like. We participate also from the aftermarket exposure.
Ken?
Thanks. Hi, good evening. Ken Herbert with RBC. Maybe two questions. First, on the cadence from the EUR 5.5 billion- EUR 10 billion within Airbus Commercial, how does that pace, as we think about the progression and anything we should keep in mind on the timing between 2026, 2027, 2029? Maybe Lars, specifically, you called about a target of 50% improvement in quality, and I'd imagine quality is an important piece of the margin and obviously the delivery cadence. Can you just give a little more detail on what's changed now since you've been running the business for a period, and what gives you more confidence on supplier quality and execution, and what you've put in place to ensure that sticks?
Maybe I take the first one. We will not give you intermediate targets on a year-by-year basis. What I would say is that the key driver specifically for commercial is, of course, the ramp up. I think we've been clear that in 2026, and to some degree also in 2027, we will be slightly be held back by deliveries of the Pratt engines relative to what our industrial system could have delivered and what we would like to have received in terms of engines. There's no change since our communication in February of this year. Things with Pratt, I would say, in terms of the delivery numbers that they will give to us are stable, albeit the fact that they're not exactly what they are. Having said that, the real ramp-up will come in terms of profitability once we are at a stable rate.
I would say the trajectory is not fully linear, but with a slight back-end loading pattern, specifically into 2028, 2029.
Maybe to the quality question, to maybe start with, make sure, we didn't start that to drive margin. We started that to drive customer satisfaction in the first hand. It gets back to first line principles of how do our people think about their own accountability when they finish their day-to-day activities, and we've seen a lot of issues that happens in the value stream of the aircraft, especially in the final assembly line. You just need to react to a customer feedback when they take delivery of the aircraft and they mention, "I don't like this, I don't like this. I have seen this." There needs to be a quality feedback loop back to the supply chain.
I spoke about it in the context of a cultural change, we're obviously starting that within our own company, and we want to put the quality, and by the way, that's feeding into the safety that we mention all the time. The quality will be at the same level of people safety. That's a DNA thing that we want to establish, and the 50% is an ambition for 2026, 2027. We see already that the teams are super engaged. No one is here to create non-quality. They want to focus on quality. The management, the teams, they're all engaged on delivering that. When we think about a moonshot quality, we also talk to our suppliers, obviously. Quality in our industry is not something that we change from one day to the other or from one month to the other.
It's really a cultural change, but it's first and foremost of shortening lead time, reducing rework, and then focusing on the final delivery date that the customer is expecting and the quality.
Maybe one word on my side. As we ramp up volumes and as we produce much more, the regularity and the predictability of what we're doing is really important. You remember what happened last year when we had the panel issues that created, indeed, a lot of disturbances in the system. As we move up, it's really important to have this regularity that a better quality would enable.
Yeah. I think it's Ian, if I see correctly.
Thank you very much. Yes, it's Ian Douglas-Pennant, with UBS. Firstly, on the pricing, a lot of aircraft that you're delivering today were ordered before COVID, when I would assume that pricing is not as attractive as it is today. Does that mean that you've got further pricing upside after 2029? Secondly, does that mean that you're rethinking the size of the backlog, like the target size of the backlog, and how far forward customers need to order and to give you better flexibility? The second is maybe half a question, but there's been a couple of oblique comments I've picked up on over this presentation when you talk about rebalancing the business model towards the aftermarket. Do you want to be involved in some kind of partnership with engine players? Just to ask the question directly.
You take the two, Lars. Pricing and the business models.
Well, guys, we're not going to talk about pricing here. You've seen the impact of pricing, delivering into 2029. Whatever we have sold post-COVID is going to be delivered as we speak, 2026, 2027. What we are selling, for example, today at the air show is benefiting our top line and bottom line post-2030 to 2032-2033. We spoke about value creation, and we create value for our customers by enlarging the plane, by giving them more yields for more premium seats, et cetera. If the customer has more yield and more value, we want to have more value as well. Second one, business model, it's premature. It's premature. We think about the next gen single aisle, launching it towards the end of the decade, entering the service in the latter half of the next decade. You need to think creatively.
You need to think different than the business model we have right now. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity when you come up with a new platform to think about the actors, to think about new partnerships, to think about the business model. That's what we're doing. When the time is right, we talk about it.
Lars is very humble, but he spent 10 years in the engine industry. We think it's an opportunity to have views and ideas on how we could also embark our engine partners on a different way of doing business moving forward, and where we could do better on tapping into the long-term value created by aircraft and engines and systems and equipments going into service. Indeed, as Lars explains, we are in the preparation of all of this, but that's something we have very high on our priority list.
Do we have question from the buy side? No, you're not from a buy side. Okay.
Turn to feminist. It's this crowd.
Chloé Lemarié with Jefferies. I'd have a follow-up on Sam's question on the A350. At what rate would you need to add a new FAL on that program? The second question is, could you actually talk about how you see your competitive positioning evolve, given that your competitor is looking to certify an aircraft closer to the A321 positioning, and obviously adding the 777X to their portfolio. What's your priority in terms of market share versus pricing going forward?
Chloé, I believe I didn't get the first question because of quality. Then I was thinking about that one and didn't get the second either. Could you?
The first question was on the A350 rates. What rate would force you to add a new FAL to the existing setup?
Well, that's easy to answer. The FAL currently is maxed out at rate 12.
Very clear. The second one was on how you think about the evolution of your competitive positioning, given how your competitor is adding the MAX 10 to their portfolio and the 777X. What's your strategy and your priorities between pricing versus market share on those kind of segments?
Well, I believe what I said is we have a very competitive product family and platform. I believe the competitor is just now following us with our successful positioning of the A321, the A321LR, and the A321XLR. We have the A320. We're going to the A220. I believe we are first mover on the positioning of our platforms, now we see the competition going afterwards. It's on us to incrementally improve our products, like I said, on possible stretches to close the gap from an A220 to an A320, an A321, at the end, we have one product family lined up from 120 seats to whatever, 350, 380 seats.
Yeah. Just in front.
Thank you. Sash Tusa from Agency Partners. A question for Thomas on your comments about your net cash position or your net cash positioning. You talked about aiming for net cash levels consistent with recent years. Let's say that's in a EUR 10 billion-EUR 15 billion range. Over the next four or five years, your revenue's going to grow from EUR 75 billion to EUR 115 billion. Should we take from that you think that you can run the company with a smaller capital buffer as a percentage of your revenues than you have done in the past? Thank you.
I'm not sure whether I would use exactly that wording, let me try to repeat, maybe slightly rephrase what I said. We have defined the EUR 10 billion net cash as a minimum for the company, in terms of threshold. I would say in the last years, we have seen values that were consistent with that. We exceeded or slightly exceeded those EUR 10 billion, we think going forward, that policy we will maintain. Therefore, I would say that indeed, things should not move automatically in line with the size of the company, because size, to some degree, can also give us protection. Therefore, our view is the policy and the way we deal with the policy should be unchanged going forward.
Yeah. Here in the front. Let's see.
Stephan Puetter, Balyasny, buy side. Two questions of mine. The first one, in the past, you've talked about targeting a less backend-loaded delivery profile. Is this something that you are still targeting? Will this only be achieved towards the end of the plan or possibly even earlier with the supply chain improving? Another question possibly also for Lars. If my math is correct, the services growth you're targeting is about a 14% CAGR, which is quite strong. Can you elaborate to what extent that is just driven by the installed base growing or also new solutions that you're offering to customers?
Should I start?
Yeah, sure.
Sure.
It's backloaded. The floor is yours.
Backloaded all over the place.
Oh.
Let's talk about commercial. Obviously, you cannot come into this position and think about the backloading of the delivery profile. We need to be able to optimize it, ideally to a string of pearls along a line. Now, in 2026 and potentially in 2027, we know that the Pratt & Whitney engine delivery is not what we expected at the speed of what we actually wanted. I believe, for 2026, this ship has sailed. For 2027, we are targeting, let's say, a smaller step to have quarter by quarter, a similar amount of aircraft. Towards 2028, when the engine situation should be eased up, we think about month by month, and then at the end, ultimately, if we come to a Swiss clock system that's delivering four or five aircraft per day.
That's the ultimate goal. That most likely will only happen towards the end of this guide. The second one was services. Well, I said we'd like to continue growing stronger than the market. I believe we have a competitive advantage because we know the aircraft. We know what the customer wants. We have a fleet of 16,000 and counting in the air that we want to connect digitally in our Skywise platform to be able to predict what the customer actually needs. How do we influence this operational excellence and efficiency? How do we manage crew management? There are a couple of items. Spare parts obviously will grow. I also said we're looking at M&A, so it's a combination of organic and inorganic growth going forward. That continues into the next decade because, we're delivering so many aircraft.
You've seen the figures on services revenue in 2044. There's a lot of market to tap into.
Maybe this center here. Yeah.
Hi. [Jochen Wermuth]. I have two questions, one on the A320. What would be the theoretical constraints to push beyond rate 75? You've done two new flights, one in China, one in the U.S., probably both more automated. Just wondering on potential rate increase on the A320 beyond 75. Two, on working capital, you have a lot of capital locked up in inventory, and I guess, as you ramp the rates, that's difficult to unlock. What when you're in 2029 at steady rates, do you see inventory staying at the current levels, or could there be inventory release?
Take the first one, Lars?
Here again, this rate 75 has been announced and an ambition since several years already. That means we have focused our investment, and the industrial capacity we have in place, both internally and externally, on the rate 75. That's a strong ambition we are achieving towards the beginning of 2028, and then we'll see. It needs either another investment to go up the rate, or we try to squeeze out a little bit by operational efficiency. Our ambition first is to go to rate 75 and see what the demand, what the flight level looks like, and then think about further steps. That also comes into play when we think about the next-gen aircraft. We need to see what's the feasibility, what's the business case to go beyond rate 75, while you have in mind you're launching the next-gen aircraft towards the end of this decade.
It's a little bit seeing how we get there first and then what about the next aircraft, the next generation aircraft.
Maybe on the inventory topic, yes, indeed, we're sitting on elevated levels of inventory, EUR 45 billion or so. That is, however, I think, to be accepted at this point because we're still in the ramp-up phase, the company is still growing. We're doubling the output on the wide -bodies. The A320 is still on the ramp-up to rate 75, we're in a situation where the supply chain is significantly improving, but not yet at the level of stability that we would like, ideally, to see.
Therefore, for me, at this point, to start with, I accept this level of inventory, I would not expect it to be reduced by 2029 because, again, the ramp-up will continue at this point, then we are in a stabilization phase. I think starting 2029 into the 2030s, there should be opportunities in terms of reducing inventory. I think there's another, let's say, source of cash when the company is at a stable rate. We have not modeled in any significant amount because I think that would be premature. Also from my experience, inventory reduction is not the easiest thing, sometimes it takes a little longer than half a year. I would say there's no major assumption baked in terms of cash coming from inventory reduction.
Charles, in the middle of the room.
Thank you. Charles Armitage at Citi. Production engineers love flat production and hate ramp-ups. Carrying on from the inventory, there is a whole bunch of cost from ramping up, which hopefully will disappear once you achieve rate 75. Quality goes up, things turn up when you want them to, rework comes down, et cetera. Is there any way you can help us quantify the excess costs that will then start coming out over the next few years post flat production?
May I give it a try? I would say, Charles, the way how we have characterized this excess cost in terms of what is with us, I think the best proxy we are able to give you is this excess workforce that we are carrying relative to the output that we have. When we were hiring a lot of people in 2023, we said the order of magnitude is around 10,000 people, which equals almost EUR 1 billion of extra costs that we are incurring because of training the people, because of rework, because of inefficiencies, because of throughput times that, as you said, are longer than what they ideally should be in a steady state. We are continuously now reducing these extra costs, because you have seen that our hiring has come down quite significantly, our view is that hiring should be decelerated further.
Essentially, these two curves, intellectually, from the people that we pre-hire and the production that comes, will cross in, let's say, 2027, 2028, when we come to a stable rate. The total amount of inefficiencies two years ago, we would have said is roughly EUR 1 billion. We have since then reduced that by, I would say, a small, but not an insignificant amount, the majority is yet to come on the way to 2029. That is of course, fully baked into the EUR 12 billion-EUR 13 billion that we have given you as a midterm ambition for the company.
With the assumption that we could still be ramping up on the wide -bodies, depending on the decisions to come.
We have a question, yeah, right there.
Hi, Steve Friedman, Darsana Capital. Two questions. One, Thomas, you said on rate that you were assuming about 1,100 deliveries, if I heard correctly, for the 2029 ambition. If I just do the basic 75 + 13 + 5 + 12 and multiply by the 11 .5 months, I think the number's over 1,200. Can you just clarify what the number of deliveries is? On inflation, I think you had talked about in the past that there is a potential to recover some lost ground on inflation, depending on what happens. Can you just comment on what's assumed in the EUR 10 billion? Thank you.
Well, my honest answer will be, we just wanted to slide away from giving units guidance towards the outer years. I think your math totally is right. We haven't communicated on the new rates, so we want to guide financially in the future, not on units, and we'll see how the units support the way we are trajecting here. It could be more than 1,100.
Maybe I just take the question on inflation. You know that all our contracts have escalation clauses that protect us, within certain, I would say, brackets, and they are linked to both labor cost inflation baskets and also material cost inflation baskets. So far, that has worked extremely well, including, I would say, some learnings that we took out of the COVID times, where when inflation went so high, that we introduced what we now call hyperinflation clauses in all the contracts that we have. Our assumption is that inflation will be in, I would say, in the normal range, also as being, let's say, targeted by the central banks in Europe and also in the United States. A level that is, let's say, consistent with what we're seeing currently, and that is also a level, where we feel well protected through the contracts that we have.
That is essentially the assumption that is baked into the projections that we're making.
We now have a final question. Yes?
Yes. Thank you. Two questions as well. [Herbert Oel] from CIC CIB. The first one is on cash return to shareholder, to come back on that. I see you give this dividend payout flexibility plus the share buyback. Is the way you think more based on cumulative free cash flow and maybe a 60% is what you have in mind? The second one is, should there be any one-off significantly on cash flow, let's say, coming from, for example, Pratt & Whitney for the issue with the contract? Or maybe some compensation with Bromo that may potentially come. Should shareholders expect as well, potentially maybe a 60% cut on that?
Thank you very much for the question. That gives me the opportunity to clarify. The intention was not to make the 60% a, let's say, guiding principle, target number or anything. It was the backward calculation of what we think we will do in the next years or what we could be doing in the next years. We feel this is a relatively, let's say, attractive number from a shareholder perspective. Our concept is more anchored in our net cash level that we want to have, which I gave you is unchanged, both in terms of principle and way how we deal with it. Secondly, I think the share buyback program that we have announced gives us a lot of flexibility. Therefore, we would be able to deal with also cash situations where more cash is coming in than what we have projected.
Because we have the, as I said, flexibility to accelerate, decelerate. That I think is one other aspect that we find makes sense to have in the overall framework that we've given you.
Ladies and gentlemen, that brings this event to an end right on time. Thank you very much to the executive team for their time. Thank you also to all the teams who behind the scene made this event possible. To our guests connected online, thank you for tuning in and goodbye.