Rolls Royce confirms engine delays but backs full-year guidance

Rolls-Royce backed its full-year guidance on Friday as it said it expects to deliver fewer Trent 7000 engines in the fourth quarter than originally planned.

Pinning the blame on "early stage production ramp-up challenges", the aerospace and defence giant said it is likely to fall short of its prior engine delivery projection of around 550 large engine deliveries for this year and is now expecting to deliver 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," it said.

"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."

The company was responding to a report by Bloomberg earlier, which cited a memo in which staff were told that output of the engines so far was "far short" of the 30 engines promised to Airbus due to "technical and operational challenges".

At 1445 BST, the shares were down 4.4% at 833.40, having fallen to as low as 747p after the Bloomberg report.