Engine explosion will reduce Rolls Royce 2010 results

Rolls Royce will make less money than expected in 2010, the company has said, following the explosion of one of its engines on a Qantas A380 super-jumbo that was found to have been caused by a flawed component.

The company said that the issue was confined only to its Trent 900 engine. A week of investigations found that the failure of the component on the Qantas airliner caused an oil fire which sparked the explosion.

“As a result of the recent Trent 900 incident on 4 November, partially mitigated by better performance in the marine and defence businesses, the board now expects underlying profit growth for the full year to be slightly lower than previously guided,” the company said.

Chief executive Sir John Rose was upbeat though, pointing to the scale of the company’s order book, the breadth and mix of its portfolio, the global nature of the business and strong balance sheet.

Increasing demand from overseas is also expected to offset the anticipated reduction in revenues from the UK government following the recent Strategic Defence and Security Review.