Aerospace
A more than £2bn increase in turnover at Rolls-Royce, yielding higher operating profits in 2022, boosted its shares even as the new ceo. Ex-BP Tufan Erginbilgic, sounded a warning and com-missioned a review into the UK power engineering business to restore its competitiveness and value. The uplift came in large part from the Civil Aerospace division, whose engine maintenance business benefitted from a 35% y-o-y increase in engine flying hours (EHF) for large jet engines— although that still put the EFH 35% below pre-pandemic 2019 level.
Meanwhile, despite its new generation engine’s environmental advantages, Pratt & Whitney still has work to do to improve the reliability of its geared-turbofan (GTF) PW1000G engine— the powerplant of Airbus’s best-selling A320neo. The GTF is now going about 10,000 hours between maintenance overhauls, Raytheon Technologies ceo Gregory Hayes said this month, still behind competition.
Source; Airbus, Boeing
Airbus, meanwhile, has opted to put brakes on the pace of its aircraft production ramp up deliveries in favour of reliability. In January, Airbus delivered 20 aircraft, down by a third from January 2022,. Boeing’s January deliveries increased by 6 air-craft y-o-y to 38. Of these, 35 were 737 Max, for which Boeing is ramping up production from 31 a month now to 50 a month by 2025/202, adding a production line in Everett, next year.
Automotive
China’s automotive industry, the world’s largest produced 1.59m cars in January, down more than a third (34.3%) y-o-y, according to the China Assocation of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM). Of those, 425,000 were new energy vehicles (NEVs), accounting for 26.6% of output, but with units down 6.9% y-o-y. Car sales with in China, of 1.65m were also down 35% y-o-y in January, as car purchase tax breaks and electric vehicle subsi-dies ended and Lunar New Year holidays hampered domestic trade. Meanwhile exports of 301,000 rose by ore than 30%, with NEV exports up almost by half to 83,000 in January.
The EU car market, which accounts for one-fifth of global demand grew by 11.3% y-o-y to 760,041 passenger cars in January, albeit from a modest 2022 level, according to the region’s industry association ACEA. Across Europe (EU= EFT=UK) the in-crease was 10.7% y-o-y to 911,064 cars. Hybrid electric vehicles now make up 26.8% of new car sales in Europe with battery electric vehicles adding 10.5% and plug in hybrids 7.1%.
Yet the region still lacks EV infrastructure. Almost 42% of all charging points for electric cars in the EU are concentrated in only two countries: the Netherlands (111,821 chargers, 70% more than Romania) and Germany (87,674), ACEA points out.
EU concentration of electric car charging points. Source: ACEA
Semiconductors
Global semiconductor industry sales totalled $573.5bn in 2022, the highest-ever annual total and a y-o-y increase of 3.2% vs $555.9 bn in 2021, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). Sales slowed during the second half of the year.
SIA: World semiconductor sales by revenue
Fourth-quarter sales of $130.2bn were 14.7% down y-o-y and 7.7% vs Q3 2022. Global sales for the month of December of 43.4 billion were down 4.4% on November 2022, according to data from World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) organization, with the largest 16% rise in sales to the Americas.
“The global semiconductor market experienced significant ups and downs in 2022, with record-high sales early in the year followed by a cyclical downturn taking hold later in the year,” said John Neuffer, SIA president and CEO. “Despite short-term fluctuations in sales due to market cyclicality and macroeconomic conditions, the long-term outlook for the semiconductor market remains incredibly strong, due to the ever-increasing role of chips in making the world smarter, more efficient, and better connected.”
