Airbus profits take hit but beat analysts expectation.

Airbus said today it had taken a hit on bottom line profit but had beaten analysts expectations in 2016.

Profits were down 63% to 995 million euros after a huge write-off on on its A400 military transporter plane.

The company still beat analysts expectations despite the 2.2bn euro A400 charge hitting the bottom line.

Airbus delivered more planes last year, 688 versus 635 in 2015, but with A350 production ramp up and impact from handover issues on the A320neo both contributed to a dint in profit.

Overall “adjusted” operating income fell 4% to 3.9bn euros, revenue rose 3% to 66.5bn euros

Analysts had forecast a 7.3% drop in full-year operating profit.

It’s the first set of result announced by Airbus since the start of an internal merger aimed streamlining the company’s structure by combining the European planemaker with its parent Airbus Group, formerly known as EADS.

Tom Enders, Airbus Chief Executive Officer said:

We have delivered on the commitments that we gave a year ago and achieved our guidance and objectives, with one exception, the A400M, where we had to take another significant charge totalling 2.2 billion euros in 2016.

De-risking the programme and strengthening programme execution are our top priorities for this aircraft in 2017,

The record order backlog is supporting the ramp-up plans and our performance in 2016 shows we can deliver on that.

We successfully managed the ramp-up of the single-aisle and A350 programmes while at the same time transitioning to the more efficient version of the A320.

Our commercial performance in helicopters was good despite a difficult market environment and we continued to strengthen and reshape the defence and space portfolio.

We are taking additional steps to increase efficiency through the integration project, while investments in digital transformation will further improve our competitiveness.

Overall, the progress we made last year gives us confidence that we have the building blocks in place to achieve our earnings and cash flow growth potential.