The aviation supplier based in Ried im Innkreis has to make cuts again for the 2021 financial year: the bottom line (earnings after taxes) is a loss of 23,6 million euros - a year earlier it was 77 million euros.

This emerges from the annual report on Wednesday. Sales amounted to 497,6 million euros, one-off effects amounting to 29,4 million euros pushed the EBIT (operating result) down to minus 25,1 million euros. The background to the negative one-off effect was a lost legal dispute with a supplier. But the effects of the pandemic were still clearly felt in 2021. Continued travel restrictions meant international air travel was just a quarter of pre-crisis volume, wrote the company, which supplies aircraft parts to Airbus and Boeing. For the year 2022, FACC expects a slow recovery in air traffic. In the medium term, annual growth should be 3 to 4 percent again and thus at the pre-crisis level.

“2021 was a special year for FACC AG. In a challenging market environment, our market assessments have been confirmed: sales development was as forecast, the operating EBIT was even slightly better than planned. The increasing demand for short and medium-haul aircraft for the coming years, which has been confirmed by customers, also corresponds to our assessment of the market," reports CEO Robert Machtlinger. Only the negative outcome of a legal dispute in 2008 came as a surprise to the supplier.

The second half of 2021 was mainly characterized by supply chain problems, a lack of skilled workers and fluctuations in global markets, which led to a slowdown in global economic growth. The group expects that the lack of transport capacities will only ease up slowly in the future. The industry was also concerned with the high inflation in the euro zone and in the USA due to the scarcity of raw materials and the dramatic increase in energy prices.