THLLY - Thales S.A. (THLEF) Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript
2024-07-23 09:09:09 ET
Thales S.A. (THLEF)
Q2 2024 Earnings Conference Call
July 23, 2024 02:30 AM ET
Company Participants
Alexandra Boucheron - Vice President, Head, Investor Relations
Patrice Caine - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
Pascal Bouchiat - Chief Financial Officer
Conference Call Participants
Christophe Menard - Deutsche Bank
George Zhao - Bernstein
Herve Drouet - CIC Market Solutions
Ben Heelan - Bank of America
George Mcwhirter - Berenberg
Tristan Sanson - BNP Paribas
David Perry - JPMorgan
Aymeric Poulain - Kepler Cheuvreux
Presentation
Operator
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to today's Thales' First Half 2024 Results Conference Call. The presentation will be held today by Mr. Patrice Caine, Thales' Chairman and CEO; and Pascal Bouchiat, Thales' CFO. It will be followed by a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] I advice you that this conference is being recorded today.
I would now like to hand the conference over to Ms. Alexandra Boucheron, VP Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Alexandra Boucheron
Good morning. Welcome and thank you for joining us for the presentation of Thales' 2024 half year results. I'm Alexandra Boucheron, Head of Investor Relations at Thales. With me today are Patrice Caine, Chairman and CEO; and Pascal Bouchiat, CFO of Thales.
As usual this presentation is audio webcast live on our website at thalesgroup.com where the slides and the press release are also available for download. A replay will be available soon after the end of the event.
With that, I'd like to turn over the call to Patrice Caine.
Patrice Caine
Good morning everyone. So, as usual I will start with the highlights of the period. And I'm now on Slide number 2. So, we have enjoyed a strong commercial dynamics aimed in this first half and notably in defense and security where we have recorded three orders in excess of €500 million. This momentum was especially driven by large orders, leading our backlog to reach a new historical record of €47 billion.
Sales were also robust, growing by 6% organically, standing at the top of the guidance range set for this year. This growth was fueled by strong organic growth in Aeronautics and Defense & Security ahead of our expectations.
Strong achievements in terms of profitability as well with an EBIT up margin 20 basis points compared to last year, while we increased our R&D expenses, notably in Space and Pascal will come back to it and faced high comps for DIS....
Thales S.A. (THLEF) Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript