Outlook and strategy for airbus
Interview: EADS--Camus, Philippe---Chief Executive Officer (slow)
>> Welcome back. we have breaking news from kobe bryant homes. the company reporting third quarter earnings of $2.33 a share, ahead of the $2.14 estimate. the consensus estimate of analysts surveyed by thomson financial. the company see sees 2004 margins maintained. the company had a third quarter backlog of $29%. net third quarter orders were up 16%. third quarter revenue came in at $1.44 billion, below expectations. $1.5 billion had been the expectations. you see in the extended hours the shares are up by a few cents. well, moving on. next on the program our next guest is the co-chief executive officer of european air gnaw tick defense. a.e.d.s., the biggest owner of in airbus. philipe ka mood joins us from our washington bureau to talk about the outlook and strategy for eads and airbus. thanks for being on the program.
>> let me begin to ask you to characterize how you are seeing demand for commercial passenger jets separated in regions of the world, the u.s., europe as well as asia.
>> well, good afternoon. there is some sign of improvement of the traffic, especially the passenger traffic both in europe and in america, and clearly it’s stronger in europe. in asia it’s coming back, too, but it has been affected by the epidemic of sars last year but it is recovering.
>> asia is recovering, but again go over europe and the u.s. and how you see demand there.
>> better. better. europe has now passenger traffic volume which is higher than last year in 2002. north america is still below, well below but it’s improving very fast.
>> let me ask you about a story we saw on china. yesterday boeing said it expects chinese airlines industry wide now, chinese airlines to order from boeing and yourself and other competitors 2400 aircraft over the next 20 years, which would be―that’s a lot of planes, mostly they’d be single aisle jets. do you agree with that assessment that china could order as many as 2400 planes over the years.
>> the chinese market is developing very fast. we have―we are sitting our aircraft in china very intensively. and i do think that china has a big potential, so that’s why we are competing very fiercely in this market.
>> you say you are competing fiercely. what is your market share there. boeing said it has 60% market share in china. what is your figure for your own market share?
>> well, i mean we are reaching 50%, and globally, not speaking with china, since the beginning of the year, our market share is 60% of the global world market, and we are aiming to have the same kind of market share in china, too.
>> i want to ask you about the jets that refuel other jets, known as airborne tankers. boeing is working on a deal to sell the u.s. air force those tanker jets i has not been concluded yet. you proposed to compete with that deal but your initial offer had been rejected. we see these headlines crossing on the bloomberg terminal, actually in the last 10 minutes, it says your company will invest over 83 million for advance centerline refueling technology to develop a u.s. tanker aircraft or a tanker aircraft that could be sold to the u.s. talk about that, please.
>> yes, i mean we are dedicated to have a strong presence in north america and in the u.s., and we think that as we are a global aerospace and defense company, we have―to have a global presence in the u.s. market too. and regarding the tanker business, it’s an important market. we think that we can provide our good products to the d o.d. and to u.s. customers. last year we requested information by the u.s. air force to provide information on our a-330. finally they did decide not to retain our proposition, especially because the boom technology we had was not fully compliant to the u.s. requirements. so we have decided to finance our own research and development cost a new boom, as it is a technical word, and we are close to the end of this development, in order to be fully prepared for the next round of negotiation, for the next round of sales.
>> a few seconds left. the euro is up 15% in the last 12 months. are you hedged against currency fluctuations? how does that affect earnings?
>> it does not affect earnings because we are hedged―we are selling the u.s. dollar. so there is no short-term impact. we’ll have a medium term impact if the euro was staying to our level.
>> thanks to philipe camos. blab
