SINGAPORE (Feb 18): Airbus SE CEO Tom Enders scrapped the company’s totemic but unprofitable A380 jet and booked more than €1.1 billion ($1.68 billion) in charges to leave a clean slate for his successor.

In addition to scrapping the flagship superjumbo, Enders, who stands down in April, announced extra costs for restructuring the A400M military transport programme and revealed the loss of a major order for its newest wide-body jet.

The shares rose, as the disclosures about aircraft projects that have dogged Airbus for years will help prepare the ground for incoming CEO Guillaume Faury. That will ease a worry list that still includes responding to the impact of Brexit on UK wing plants and dealing with fallout from a bribery probe into the use of middlemen to secure sales.

In his final results statement, Enders, 60, predicted a 15% gain in earnings this year and said he was leaving behind a company that is on a “solid growth trajectory”. Defence and helicopter arms that have struggled for sales are also “in good shape” for Faury and his team to take over, he said.

The shares advanced as much as 5.4%, the most in more than a month. Airbus was up 5.1% to €109.74 at 9.03am in Paris on Feb 14, taking gains for the year to about 30%.

In addition to terminating the A380 superjumbo at a cost of €463 million, Airbus booked a charge of €436 million after reaching an agreement with government customers on revamping the A400M programme. It also expensed €123 million for compliance issues and €81 million in unspecified costs.

Adding to the landslide of revelations on Feb 14 was news that Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways will cut an order for the latest A350 wide-bodies by 42 planes. The carrier’s Persian Gulf neighbour, Emirates, is picking up 30 of the type as it slashes its A380 backlog, triggering the end of that programme.

Airbus, based in Toulouse, France, posted an adjusted profit of €5.8 billion in 2018 on sales of €64 billion, and raised its dividend to €1.65 a share. In addition to the predicted earnings jump in 2019, the company said it expects €4 billion in free cash flow.

Enders is kitchen-sinking costs from problem programmes as he prepares to leave after this year’s annual shareholder meeting. The strategy may be wise, given investor impatience about the pace of progress, Jefferies International analyst Sandy Morris said in a note. The 2019 outlook is above consensus and makes Airbus the “favourite in waiting” among European capital goods stocks, he said.

The outgoing CEO, an ex-paratrooper who rose through the ranks at Airbus and was appointed chief after running the jetliner unit, has had a long goodbye after announcing that he planned to leave as long ago as December 2017.

For much of the period since, he had seemed determined to preserve the A380 even as sales slowed, before announcing on Feb 1 that the key order from Dubai-based Emirates was under review.

Airbus aims to hand over between 880 and 890 aircraft this year. That could narrow the gap to <strong>Boeing</strong>, the world’s biggest planemaker, to five jets from six in 2018 after the US company set itself a goal of 895 to 905 deliveries.

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