Sales of commercial and military helicopters made a significant contribution to double-digit growth in financial performance at Leonardo during the first half of 2024. On Tuesday, the Italian aerospace and defense group reported a 15.6% uptick in orders across its diverse product portfolio to €10.3 billion ($11.2 billion), while revenues increased by 10.9%, to €8 billion, and earnings by 13.3%, to €503 million.
Through June 30, Leonardo logged helicopter orders valued at €3.6 billion, which was almost a 28% increase from a year ago, taking its backlog to €14.4 billion. Over the same period, Leonardo’s rotorcraft revenues grew by almost 13%—from €2.16 billion to €2.43 billion—while the order backlog from this division was up by 8.6% at 15,666 aircraft.
During the first half of 2024, Leonardo delivered 77 helicopters, slightly below the 82 delivered in the same period last year. The company said the division’s improvement in revenues was mainly attributable to “increased activities on dual-use helicopter lines” and also to stronger demand for customer support, training, and services.
New orders logged through the end of June included 20 AW139s for The Helicopter Company in Saudi Arabia, which will use the aircraft for emergency medical and search-and-rescue missions. Other civil orders came from Bristow and Norwegian energy group Equinor, in addition to government contracts from North Macedonia and from Galaxy Aerospace, which is contracted to perform search-and-rescue missions for Malaysia's Maritime Enforcement Agency.
Leonardo also reported growth in its aircraft sector, including deliveries of wings for both Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter and the Eurofighter consortium’s Typhoon. However, it acknowledged that new orders from this segment of its business dipped due to the postponement of defense acquisition decisions into the second half of this year.
The group’s aerostructures business was boosted by an uptick in orders for the fuselages it supplies to both Boeing and ATR for their airliners. It also benefitted from increased orders at Airbus.