Project Sunrise has slipped on Airbus supply problems. But despite the news, Qantas closed up 5.7 per cent. Here’s why.
Qantas (QAN) closed Monday at $9.175, up 5.70 per cent on the day, after confirming that Project Sunrise will not fly on its original schedule. A flagship strategic programme being pushed back should not, on the face of it, send a stock 5 per cent higher in a single session. The market took the opposite view. Here is how the financial logic of a delayed multi-billion-dollar capital programme can read as good news in the very short term.
What Project Sunrise is and why it slipped
Project Sunrise is Qantas’ ultra-long-haul programme, designed to enable non-stop services from Sydney to London and Sydney to New York using a fleet of 12 firm Airbus A350-1000ULR aircraft. The first commercial services were originally targeted for late 2025 and were most recently scheduled for mid-2026.
However, Airbus has been managing well-documented supply chain pressure on its widebody programme, with engine availability and cabin-fit delays flowing through to delivery schedules across multiple A350 customers globally. Qantas’ ASX disclosure today pushed the commercial launch window further out and attributed the change to Airbus delivery timing rather than to internal readiness.
Following the money
The A350-1000 carries an Airbus list price of around US$355 million per airframe, with the ULR variant carrying a premium for additional fuel tank capacity. The 12-aircraft Sunrise order book represents a cool US$4 billion+ in capital, before the customary order discounts. Pushing that capital outlay further out in time has consequences for QAN’s financials.
There’s the fall in immediate capex spending for the years the planes were meant to be delivered into service, better depreciation to consider and more free cash flow in the short term.
As a result, the stock went into its ascent yesterday.
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