Europe’s two giant aerospace companies are looking to merge their satellite-related businesses. Airbus Defence & Space and Thales Alenia Space are in ‘nonbinding’ talks about merging their two divisions.

One third of Thales Alenia is owned by Italy’s Leonardo (and Leonardo also controls two-thirds of Telespazio).

Airbus Chief Executive Guillaume Faury, speaking at the Airbus financial results on February 20th, explained that the talks concerned only the pair’s satellite and satellite services divisions.

“We expect to gain scale and speed by consolidating the business,” Fairy told analysts. “We are in a business where scale matters, where technologies go very fast so you need to invest. To invest, you need scale to have a reasonable impact on the recurring costs, so you have to have scale in the production as well. In Europe, at Airbus and also at Thales Alenia Space and Telespazio, we have technologies, in some cases even better ones. But we are missing the scale we need to be competitive in this new environment.”

Faury added that Airbus itself would be happy to have a stake in a successful business, “that can prosper, grow, invest and be successful on a global scale.”

Airbus reported that consolidated revenues increased year-on-year to €69.2 billion, an increase of 6 per cent on 2023.

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Tags: Airbus, Thales