Rolls-Royce confirms that it expects to deliver fewer Trent 7000 engines in Q4 2018 than originally planned, reflecting early stage production ramp up challenges. As a result, we are likely to fall short of our prior engine delivery projection of approximately 550 large engine deliveries for 2018, and are now expecting to deliver approximately 500 engines.

While we regret the impact this will have on our customers, we are today re-iterating our financial guidance for 2018 profit and free cash flow as provided at the time of our interim results in August 2018.

Our priority has always been to ensure that the Trent 7000 engine meets customer expectations on entry into service and we have seen very good performance attributes during a rigorous testing phase. We continue to work very closely with Airbus and our customers on the details of the delivery schedule. While the production ramp up issues in Q4 are regrettable, such issues in the early stages of a new engine program are not uncommon in our industry. As we move into 2019 we are confident that Trent 7000 production and delivery volumes will increase significantly to meet our customer commitments.