Leonardo helicopter deliveries jumped by 36 units to 185 in 2023; however, order intake ebbed from a strong 2022 that had included a sale to the Polish Ministry of Defense for 32 AW149s.
Releasing preliminary results yesterday afternoon, Leonardo reported that revenues for its helicopters division in 2023 reached €4.725 billion ($5.12 billion) last year, a nearly 4 percent improvement from the €4.547 billion ($4.927 billion) in 2022. Leonardo scaled up its deliveries as it was able to "navigate around the supply chain," said CFO Alessandra Genco. At the same time, orders dipped by 9 percent to €5.513 billion on the year in the helicopters unit, compared with 2022’s € 6.06 billion that had the Polish Ministry order as an anchor. Backlog at the end of the year stood at €14.4 billion.
Even so, Leonardo remained encouraged that its commercial sales and customer service business remained strong throughout the year.
The helicopters business helped contribute to the 4 percent increase in revenues for the company overall as it continues to streamline its businesses and reorganize. Leonardo CEO and general manager Roberto Cingolani noted that the company would more fully outline its plans during its investor day on March 12, when its 2023 results have been fully audited. In addition, Leonardo will release its 2024 guidance at that time.
In response to an analyst question, Cingolani further touched upon Leonardo’s recent memorandum of understanding with Bell surrounding civil tiltrotor technologies. He pointed to the U.S. Army’s decision last month to cancel the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) program and noted that the service wants speed, range, cabin pressurization, and vertical takeoff and lift parameters that are not available in traditional helicopters—but that lends itself to tiltrotor.
“That, for us, was super good news” because it supports the decision to invest in the AW609 civil tiltrotor. “We are the only European company having a tiltrotor close to certification, primarily for civil application, that can be transformed for strategic applications.” He further mentioned that Bell is the only other company with such technology and that the two share the original design of the AW609. “We developed two synergistic and complementary models. They have a big heavy payload. We have the light payload.”