Airbus Needs Record Q4 to Hit Delivery Target, mwb Research Says

mwb Research said Airbus’s (EPA:AIR) full-year delivery goal now hinges entirely on a record fourth quarter, but kept its Buy rating and 227 euro price target ahead of the planemaker’s August orders and deliveries release.

Based on its tracking, the firm estimates Airbus delivered around 466 commercial aircraft through Aug. 29, excluding any handovers on the final two days of the month, 7% ahead of the same point in 2025.

To reach its guided 870 deliveries, analyst Jens-Peter Rieck said Airbus must hand over 404 aircraft between September and December, or roughly 101 a month. That would be 11% above the previous four-month record of 363 set in 2019.

Momentum has cooled recently, with July printing only 67 units and August tracking at around 48, down 21% year over year. mwb described the target as ambitious but not impossible, noting Airbus has repeatedly cleared bars the market called out of reach.

The firm said the key difference from 2019 is the nature of the bottleneck. “The constraint in 2019 was a broad ramp on a rising A320 rate, while today the main constraint is engine availability,” it wrote, pointing to Pratt & Whitney as the top constraint on the A320 family.

mwb kept its 870 forecast, implying around 150 December deliveries, and said that with a backlog above 9,000 units, any 20 to 40-unit slip simply defers value into 2027.