Bottlenecks in important components, for example, continue to cause problems for aircraft and engine manufacturers. Airbus boss Guillaume Faury complains about the lack of seats and semiconductors. Engine builders like MTU and Safran compete for raw materials, which they often source from the same suppliers. The bottlenecks could last until 2024 or 2025, said Faury on Wednesday on the France Inter radio station. The bosses of MTU and Safran did not raise their business targets for 2023 further, despite surprisingly strong quarterly figures.
After the business slump in the Corona crisis, aircraft and engine manufacturers can hardly save themselves from the demand for new medium-haul jets, engines and spare parts. The MTU leadership around the new CEO Lars Wagner expects the highest sales in the company’s history for 2023 with 6.1 billion to 6.3 billion euros. The operating profit adjusted for special items should exceed the record value from the pre-crisis year 2019 at 750 million to 775 million euros.
Brilliant start to the year for MTU
The start of the year was brilliant for the Dax group: “We have completed the best quarter in the history of MTU,” said Wagner. “Against the background of the ongoing uncertainties in the supply chains, we are maintaining our forecast for the full year 2023 today.”
In the first quarter, sales rose by 31 percent compared to the same period last year to more than 1.5 billion euros, as MTU had already announced. All in all, MTU earned 134 million euros, two and a half times as much as a year earlier. At that time, the group had booked a special charge as a result of the sanctions against Russia.
Saffron was also up in the first quarter. Adjusted Group sales rose by a good 29 percent to almost 5.3 billion euros. Safran boss Olivier Andriès sees the group on the right track to increasing sales this year to at least 23 billion euros as planned. Adjusted operating profit is expected to reach around three billion euros.
These things are currently lacking
Airbus boss Faury said the big problem is the mismatch between supply and demand. Important parts such as seats were missing, “equipment is missing, people are missing, semiconductors are missing, raw materials are missing”. In view of the difficulties in the supply chains, Airbus had pushed back its planned expansion of its medium-haul jet production in February.
According to Andriès, saffron is struggling for access to things like steel, aluminum, titanium and even resins. The situation with semiconductors remains tense. According to MTU boss Wagner, the manufacturers are dependent on a few common suppliers for certain materials. There are only two companies worldwide that produce important structural cast parts for engines. So far, Wagner has not seen any material bottlenecks at MTU when building its own parts for new drives. However, the Dax group also operates its own final assembly for so-called geared turbofan engines. If parts from other partners are missing there, this slows down production.
