Rolls-Royce accelerates £1.5bn share buyback under Erginbilgiç

Rolls-Royce announced on 12 November that it is accelerating the execution of a £1.5 billion share buyback programme, to be completed by 23 February 2027 at the latest. The trades are executed through UBS on behalf of the company, and the repurchased shares are cancelled immediately upon completion of the buyback.

The decision comes at a stage in which the company, led by Turkish CEO Tufan Erginbilgiç, is seeing strong demand across civil aviation, defence and power systems. The Power Systems division recorded the highest order backlog in its history, reaching £8.6 billion at the end of September 2025, compared with £8 billion in June. New orders for gas engines for AI-powered data centres also rose to about three times their value compared with the same period last year.

The £1.5 billion represents the brought-forward portion of a broader programme the company previously announced, ranging between £7 and £9 billion over 2026-2028, and is not a separate addition to it. Rolls-Royce had already completed about £2.4 billion of the £2.5 billion buyback programme earmarked for 2026.

The company maintained its financial guidance for 2026, expecting adjusted operating profit of between £4.7 and £4.9 billion, and free cash flow of between £3.8 and £4 billion. Its shares rose about 2% on the London Stock Exchange after the announcement, closing at £13.70.

In civil aviation, the large-engine order backlog reached about 2,500 engines, including 70 engines for Avolon and 22 Trent 7000 engines for the Cathay group. Air China and Philippine Airlines also disclosed their preferences for different Trent models. Total flying hours for large engines in the first ten months of 2026 rose 4% year on year, reaching 114% of pre-pandemic 2019 levels.

The company intends to review its medium-term targets with the announcement of full-year 2026 results on 25 February 2027, amid expectations of an upward revision to the adjusted operating profit target of £4.9-5.2 billion for 2028.