Boeing returns to lead Top 100 aerospace companies ranked by revenue

The upper end of the latest Top 100 ranking of aerospace businesses by revenue has an old familiar feel. Boeing and Airbus head the table with RTX and Lockheed Martin in their wakes. The big two airframers fought it out for prime spot for most of the previous decade, but the collapse in the airline market during the pandemic saw Lockheed and a post-merger RTX each emerge as aerospace’s largest player in subsequent surveys.

The US airframer’s return to peak position might seem surprising given the depth of its financial, industrial, and reputational woes. However, its sales success only tells part of the story. Boeing’s revenues rose by about a sixth in 2023, but it remained in operational loss – albeit much less than its $3.5 billion deficit in 2022.

And, despite second- and third-placed Airbus and RTX (parent of Collins Aerospace, Pratt & Whitney, and Raytheon) also recording sales increases, supply chain snags from inflationary cost pressures to late delivery payments – scarcely better in 2023 than 2022 – hit both companies’ operating margins, which were down on the previous year. Meanwhile, defence-reliant Lockheed’s margins held firm on slightly increased revenues.

Despite the many challenges facing the commercial aviation sector, there are signs the industry is returning to the sort of performance it enjoyed before Covid-19, in revenue terms at least. Boeing’s 2023 sales of $77.8 billion were higher than the $76.6 billion generated in 2019, while Airbus – which headed the rankings four years ago with revenue of $78.9 billion – made $70.8 billion in the latest survey.

This is despite Airbus delivering more than 200 additional commercial jets than its rival during the year (735 to 528), although the figures are based on both companies’ entire output (primarily defence and space and services in the case of Boeing, and helicopters and defence and space for the European group). Airbus’s accounts are also in euros, which we convert to dollars for the purposes of the survey.

STEADY PERFORMANCE

As is often the case with the Top 100, the rest of the top 20 positions have barely changed year-on-year. This time, we have taken the decision to omit Rostec – holding company for much of Russia’s aerospace and defence industrial assets and ranked sixth in last year’s survey – because of the difficulty in sourcing credible financial data in the light of the Putin regime’s continuing ostracisation.

Edging into the top 20 is South Korean manufacturer Hanwha, along with Spirit AeroSystems, which like the company about to buy it, Boeing, is in the red despite boosting revenues by a fifth in 2023.

Dassault – which had a disappointing year for business jet deliveries and depends on tranches of one-off payments from government customers for its military products – falls from 17th place last time to 26th.

Despite pressures on the commercial side of the industry in particular – from cost inflation to contractual penalties for late deliveries – average Top 100 profits grew 11.9%, almost matching a 12% rise in revenues. Operating margins, at 8.4%, were the same as in 2022 (as always, this figure is based on those companies for which an operating profit is available).

There is some divergence between the performance of the bigger and smaller businesses in the survey. For instance, while revenues for the largest 20 rose by 11.7% – almost the same as the average for the Top 100 as a whole – the bottom 20 saw their sales grow by 18%. Meanwhile, operating profits among the top 10 increased only by 6.7%, much less than the figure for the entire Top 100.

The growth in revenues across the entire Top 100 is reflected in the number joining the “billion-dollar club”. This time, 64 businesses notched up sales of at least $1 billion – the lowest ranked being Cirrus Aircraft – against 61 in 2022. However, this is still down on the last full pre-pandemic year of 2019, when Senior Aerospace, placed 66 in that list, was the smallest company recording ten-figure revenues.

Seven new entrants appear in this year’s rankings following our regular review of businesses that might be eligible. They are SpaceX (28), Baykar Technologies (49), Cirrus (64), Pursuit Aerospace (72), General Atomics (78), AeroVironment (81), and Consolidated Precision Products (93). Aerojet Rocketdyne drops out after its acquisition by L3Harris in July 2023, as does Aubert & Duval, bought by an entity part-owned by Airbus and Safran.

NECESSARY ASSUMPTIONS

In the case of certain privately-owned enterprises, we have made certain assumptions. With Elon Musk’s SpaceX, for instance, we have included the launch and satellite part of the business but excluded service provider Starlink. Engine component manufacturer Pursuit Aerospace is a new name, but combines two legacy aerospace businesses, Whitcraft and Paradigm Precision.

We also assessed data from several other aerospace businesses that did not make the final cut, most of which have appeared in previous surveys. They include French components manufacturer Figeac Aero, the manufacturing arm of Korean Air, connectivity provider Gogo, interiors specialist Jamco, Germany’s Hensoldt, light aircraft developer Piper, precision engineering firms ITT and Circor, and ejection seat manufacturer Martin-Baker.

One interesting trend among Top 100 companies is the number that are now owned by private equity. Three went down this delisting route in 2023 – Arconic, acquired by Apollo; Kaman, now owned by Arcline; and Maxar Technologies, purchased by Advent International. Platimum Equity entered into an agreement to purchase Canadian landing-gear manufacturer Heroux-Devtek in July this year.

Our regular listing of the most profitable businesses in the Top 100 also has a familiar name at the top, US group TransDigm, but others recording margins of more than 20% are the aerospace unit of Honeywell (27.3%), avionics developer Garmin (26.9%), Eaton Aerospace (23.2%), India’s Hindustan Aeronautics (22.7%), and communications specialist Teledyne Technologies (20.4%).

As always, we have attempted to list the biggest entities by revenue in both the commercial and defence segments, in some cases by separating figures from divisions, subsidiaries, or operating units (such as Gulfstream, Boeing Defense & Space, or Embraer regional) or – as in the case of Airbus and Leonardo joint venture ATR – extracting those numbers from those of the two parent companies.

COMMERCIAL SALES

In the case of commercial aircraft sales, Airbus’s dominance of the market in 2023, illustrated by the much higher unit delivery total referred to earlier, is clear, with more than $51 billion in revenues compared with Boeing’s just under $34 billion – although the US company’s 30.3% commercial sales growth during the year was almost double that of its European competitor.

Revenues of more than $8 billion at the two biggest business aviation names – Gulfstream (part of General Dynamics) and Bombardier – and to a lesser extent Textron Aviation (behind the Cessna, Citation, and Beechcraft brands) eclipse those of the smaller commercial airliner manufacturers, Embraer regional and ATR, although both of these enjoyed a boost in dollar-value sales of around a fifth in 2023.

The defence listing has a look that most will recognise, with Lockheed dominating, followed by the defence activities of RTX. Most of the businesses notched up single-digit sales increases in 2023 with the exceptions of L3Harris (bolstered by its Aerojet Rocketdyne acquisition) and Rolls-Royce, both of which recorded double figure growth. Leonardo is the only company in this grouping to see its defence sales fall.

The year on which we base this year’s Top 100 saw major merger and acquisition activity, which has continued into 2024, although nothing to match 2020’s marriage of United Technologies and Raytheon to form RTX, or Boeing’s attempt to buy Embraer’s commercial aviation operation, abandoned that same year. Boeing’s planned takeover of key supplier Spirit AeroSystems comes close, but this is not expected to complete until 2025.

Among 2023’s highlights were the completion of L3Harris’s acquisition of propulsion specialist Aerojet Rocketdyne, originally set in motion in December 2022. The move to consolidate its focus on the military side of the business meant L3Harris went on later in 2023 to announce its intention to sell for $800 million its Commercial Aviation Solutions business to a private equity buyer.

Rolls-Royce’s chief executive Tufan Erginbilgic has been on a mission to improve profitability at the UK propulsion specialist. This led to it declaring in November 2023 that it intends to divest its electrical powertrain unit as part of a strategy to exit non-core operations. The move surprised some given its previous commitment to pioneering electrical power as a future aerospace technology after its 2019 acquisition of Siemens’ eAircraft business.

The dismantling of UK aerospace and defence group Cobham under its US private equity owners continued in 2023 with the $1.1 billion sale of its aerospace communications unit to Thales, which closed in April this year. Other major acquisitions during the year saw engineering company Heico, ranked at 40 in the Top 100, snap up replacement parts manufacturer and distributor Wencor for just over $2 billion.

One of the most significant moves of this year – which will see currently 43rd placed Ball Aerospace drop out of the 2024 rankings – was the Colorado-headquartered company’s takeover by BAE Systems for $4.8 billion. The transaction – announced in August 2023 and completed in February – means Ball becomes the UK group’s new Space & Mission Systems business, bolstering BAE’s already substantial presence in the US market.

The slimming down of once mighty Triumph with a string of divestitures continued this year with the sale in February for $725 million of its maintenance and repair business to AAR, a company we do not include in the Top 100 because it is largely a stockist and distributor of other manufacturers’ parts.

Another divestment announced in 2023 but set to close this year is Safran’s $1.8 billion purchase of Collins’ flight-controls and actuation activities from RTX. The transaction had been held up by Italian government objections, since dropped, over the impact on Microtecnica, which Rome claimed was responsible for security-sensitive national assets.

FUTURE ACQUISITIONS

Future acquisition activity could come from, among others, a pure-play GE Aerospace, which separated from its former sister energy division Vernova earlier this year. Vernova was the last non-aerospace unit within what had been industrial conglomerate General Electric. At the time, chief executive Larry Culp said GE Aerospace could look to expand into aerospace markets beyond its core aircraft engine activities.

It is also unclear how Boeing’s $8.3 billion acquisition of Spirit AeroSystems will affect its Top 100 performance in 2025, given most of the Wichita-based aerostructures firm’s $6 billion revenues will be absorbed as internal transactions. The agreement, confirmed in July but subject to a lengthy regulatory process, is certain to involve the sale of Spirit’s non-Boeing units.

In July, Airbus agreed to take over the roughly one-fifth of the business that is focused primarily on the European manufacturer. That includes A350 fuselage plants in Kinston, North Carolina, and St Nazaire, France, as well as the former Bombardier operation in Belfast, which makes wings for the A220, and an associated factory in Casablanca, Morocco.

That acquisition too, when concluded, will make Airbus larger than it is currently, although, as with Boeing, it will have little effect on revenues. And while it was clear that chief executive Guillaume Faury did not have further vertical acquisition on his to-do list coming into 2024, the alternative – the prospect of Airbus having to buy critical parts from a direct competitor – was much worse.

Top 20 sales growth
Rank by growth	Rank by sales	Company name	Sales growth*
1	55	Daher	68.8%
2	27	Parker Hannifin	57.1%
3	65	Kaiser Aluminium	46.2%
4	38	Turkish Aerospace	45.4%
5	17	Hanwha Aerospace	43.2%
6	50	Panasonic Avionics	42.1%
7	89	Barnes Aerospace	41.7%
8	63	Constellium	40.4%
9	36	Korea Aerospace Industries	37%
10	40	Heico	35.8%
11	56	Kongsberg	34.5%
12	81	AeroVironment	32.6%
13	39	ATI (Allegheny Technologies)	32.1%
14	79	Subaru	32%
15	87	Latecoere	31.3%
16	90	Astronics	31.1%
17	58	Arconic	31%
18	35	ST Engineering	29.9%
19	59	AIDC	29.3%
20	41	Diehl	29.2%
Note: *local currency

Top 20 operating margin
Rank by margin	Rank by sales	Company name	Operating margin
1	18	TransDigm	40.8%
2	12	Honeywell	27.3%
3	70	Garmin	26.9%
4	32	Eaton Aerospace	23.2%
5	31	Hindustan Aeronautics	22.7%
6	61	Teledyne Technologies	20.4%
7	6	GE Aerospace	18.3%
8	94	Ontic	18.2%
9	74	Crane Aerospace and Electronics	18%
10	83	RUAG	18%
11	89	Barnes Aerospace	17.8%
12	60	Triumph	17.3%
13	52	Pilatus	16.8%
14	56	Kongsberg	16.2%
15	51	Woodward	15.2%
16	15	General Dynamics (Aerospace)	13.2%
17	4	Lockheed Martin	12.7%
18	64	Cirrus Aircraft	12%
19	33	CAE	11.6%
20	27	Parker Hannifin	11.6%

Top 10 defence sales
Rank	Company name	Defence sales ($ millions)	Sales growth
1	Lockheed Martin	67,067	2.5%
2	RTX	40,851	2.9%
3	Northrop Grumman	39,290	7.3%
4	Boeing	24,933	7.6%
5	L3Harris	18,756	14.4%
6	BAE Systems	13,603	4.8%
7	Airbus	12,440	5.1%
8	Leonardo	12,412	-3.3%
9	Rolls-Royce	5,071	12%
10	Honeywell	4,986	7.7%
Note: the total 2023 sales of the 10 largest defence companies were $234.4 billion, up from $223.5 billion, a 4.9% increase

Top commercial sales
Rank	Manufacturer	2023 sales ($ millions)	Sales growth
1	Boeing	33,901	30.3%
2	Airbus	51,692	15.3%
3	Embraer regional	1,847	19.6%
4	ATR	1,118	21.2%
5	Gulfstream	8,621	0.6%
6	Bombardier	8,046	16.4%
7	Textron Aviation	5,373	5.9%
8	Dassault Aviation	1,971	-13.5%
9	Embraer business aviation	1,408	13.1

The Top 100 is compiled on behalf of FlightGlobal by Counterpoint Market Intelligence.