Industry: Engine manufacturer MTU has full order books

Munich. Despite the uncertain global situation, the engine manufacturer MTU is once again reporting successful business figures: In the first few months, the Munich DAX group's sales rose by 13 percent to 7.1 billion euros, and net profit increased by 4 percent to 751 million euros. Although civil aviation is suffering from the effects of the Iran war and high kerosene prices this year, this has not yet had an impact on MTU with its 14,000 employees worldwide - a consequence of the long lead times in the aviation industry. CEO Johannes Bussmann even raised the forecast for this year slightly.

The customers are mainly Airbus and Boeing. Years pass between the ordering and delivery of an aircraft. Since the two major aircraft manufacturers each still have several thousand orders to process, MTU is also busy. “In this respect, these are of course things that are little influenced by short-term effects,” said Bussmann. At the end of September, MTU's order backlog was almost 30 billion euros, just as high as a year earlier.

MTU does not develop engines alone, but in cooperation with a number of partners, especially the US manufacturer Pratt & Whitney. The small military division builds and maintains, among other things, the engines of the Eurofighter. Both the civilian and military business were going well, but in the civilian division it was primarily maintenance and repair. For the entire year, MTU expects sales growth in the double-digit percentage range in all four areas - new civilian business, spare parts, maintenance and the military division. MTU had previously forecast sales of 9.2 to 9.7 billion euros for the year as a whole, but now it is expected to be at least 9.5 billion at the lower end. The dollar change is particularly helpful here, as the US currency has become somewhat stronger over the course of the year.