European plane manufacturer Airbus suffered €767 million the COVID-19 related loss in Q3 of 2020, showed financial results report. However, Guillaume Faury, the CEO of Airbus, claimed that the company has already adapted its operations to changed market conditions.
On October 29, 2020, Airbus reported a net loss of €767 million in the Q3 of 2020 compared to a profit of €989 million in the same period in 2019. The company’s boss Guillaume Faury announced that despite the net loss, the company adapted its operations to cope with the downturn in production demand and managed to stop burning cash in the Q3 of 2020.
In the financial report, Airbus stated that the higher level of deliveries compared to the results of Q2 and cash containment helped the company to give a significantly better free cash flow performance.
“We now see the progress made on adapting our business to the new COVID-19 market environment. Despite the slower air travel recovery than anticipated, we converged commercial aircraft production and deliveries in the third quarter and we stopped cash consumption in line with our ambition,” stated Faury in a press release.
Faury added that Airbus managed to „stabilize the cash flow in the quarter gives us the confidence to issue a free cash flow guidance for the fourth quarter“.
In the interview with the Associated Press, commenting on the recent financial results, the CEO said that the manufacturer did not consider any further job cuts on top of the 15,000 redundancies previously announced in September 2020. However, Faury outlined that „there is so much uncertainty we have to remain very humble,” as Airbus has predictions that the air traffic would not return to 2019 levels until 2023-2025.