These specially configured A350-1000ULRs are expected to enable the world’s longest commercial flights.
Qantas Airways
airbus announced Thursday that it expects to deliver 870 commercial aircraft in 2026, slightly less than the approximately 880 that analysts expected. The move comes amid mounting pressure on European aircraft makers from U.S. rivals. boeing Airbus is showing signs of recovery after years of crisis, which is benefiting Airbus.
UBS analyst Ian Douglas Pennant said sentiment around Airbus had deteriorated significantly since the start of the year, ahead of the company’s full-year report due early Thursday.
“While we recognize the drivers of changing sentiment and expect deliveries to increase to 880 aircraft in 2026, up from 905 previously, we also see risks skewed to the upside in the fourth quarter results,” Douglas Pennant said.
Airbus delivered 793 commercial aircraft last year, slightly exceeding its revised target of 790 aircraft. The company fell short of its original target of 820 planes due to supplier quality issues related to fuselage panels that affected deliveries of the A320 family.
Barclays analysts described the disruption as a “temporary execution setback” and said the “secular ramp” remained “intact”.
Airbus has maintained strong momentum in recent years as rival Boeing Co. battles a crisis over design and production issues with its best-selling narrowbody jet, the 737 Max.
Boeing is showing signs of recovery
Deliveries are a closely monitored metric because airplane manufacturers receive most of the money when the aircraft is delivered to the customer.
Airbus delivered 193 more aircraft in 2025 than Boeing, which exceeded orders for the first time since 2018.
This, combined with recent quality issues at Airbus, leads some to believe that the tide will change for Boeing under CEO Kelly Ortberg’s leadership.
Ortberg, who took the top job in 2024 and led the company out of the crisis, was upbeat about the company’s ability to ramp up production in the short term after reporting fourth-quarter sales in late January that beat Wall Street expectations.
Airbus and Boeing’s order backlogs have soared in recent years due to supply chain issues during the coronavirus pandemic.
Boeing also secured more deliveries and net orders than Airbus in the first month of 2026.
Boeing delivered 46 aircraft in January and posted net orders of 103 aircraft, while Airbus reported just 19 deliveries and net orders of 49 aircraft in the same period.
Airbus’ January numbers were noticeably weak, even taking into account the fact that deliveries typically decline at the beginning of the year.
“While January deliveries in a given year have historically not been a good indicator of production rates for that year, we believe that 19 deliveries in January 2026, compared to 25 deliveries in January 2025, are significantly lower than expected,” UBS said in a note to clients last week.
Barclays analysts said: “We cannot infer much from this trend other than that the expected delivery profile for 2026 is likely to be loaded on the backend again due to the typically low year-to-date levels.”
Boeing stock has outperformed Airbus stock over the past 12 months.
Airbus earlier Thursday reported fourth-quarter adjusted earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) of 2.98 billion euros, beating the company’s consensus survey estimate of 2.87 billion euros. Sales amounted to 25.98 billion euros, slightly below expectations of 26.5 billion euros.
For the full year, EBIT totaled 7.13 billion euros and sales amounted to 73.4 billion euros.
Looking ahead, Airbus said it expects adjusted EBIT of around 7.5 billion euros and free cash flow before customer financing of around 4.5 billion euros in 2026, in addition to its goal of delivering around 870 commercial aircraft.
—CNBC’s Lee Ying Shan contributed to this report.
