The company's CEO isn't afraid to do some M&A to get there
Airbus (AIR) really wants to achieve dominance in the space industry the way that it has in the commercial airline industry. Bloomberg reports that CEO Guillaume Faury said that its European Union competitors should consider merging to take on SpaceX the way it took on Boeing $BA (BA).
“There is room to find more ways of cooperating in Europe to create scale,” he reportedly said on the sidelines of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Aerospace Summit in Washington, D.C.
Though the French company has been dealing with headaches related to its commercial airliner engines, it remains the leader of a global planemaking duopoly. Boeing, its primary competitor, has been partially sidelined by a door plug blowout scandal that has slowed down its production capacity.
But space leadership eludes Airbus. On its most recent earnings call, Faury said that the company was reorganizing its space division as it took a €989 million ($1.1 billion) charge after overspending on contract fulfillment costs.
“The space business went through major shifts,” he said. “The market conditions have changed as we have seen an increased competition with some disruptive new players, and in particular, one disruptive new player.”
That player would be SpaceX. Airbus was surely anxious watching Boeing’s own high-profile space project, the CST-100 Starliner, undock from the International Space Station crewless despite leaving Earth with a crew onboard. Thanks to thruster issues that spurred safety concerns, Elon Musk’s rocket company will be their ride home instead.
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