Business news from Ukraine

Business news from Ukraine

Rolls-Royce profits soar 50% on strong demand for jet engines

Shares hit record high on news that underlying operating profits climbed to £1.7bn in first half of 2025

Rolls-Royce has reported a 50% rise in half-year profits as strong demand for its jet engines and power generators for AI datacentres solidified its turnaround efforts.

The British jet-engine maker said underlying operating profits climbed to £1.7bn in the first six months of 2025, from £1.1bn during the same period last year, in an earnings update that helped push the company’s shares to a fresh all-time high.

The strong half-year results meant the manufacturer, whose main operations are in Derby, was able to raise its profit forecast for the year from a range of £2.7bn-£2.9bn to £3.1bn-£3.2bn.

Rolls-Royce, which makes engines used in large Boeing and Airbus planes, said its earnings were driven in part by strong demand for its large engines business. It has also been helped by the boom in weapons spending since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with Rolls-Royce a key supplier of engines for fighter jets.

Its power systems business had a significant increase in interest from datacentres, which the chief executive, Tufan Erginbilgiç, confirmed was linked to the boom in artificial intelligence.

Orders for datacentres rose by 85% compared with last year. The company expects a 20% increase in datacentre orders every year to 2030, having forecast annual growth of 15-17% as recently as February.

The results helped propel Rolls-Royce’s shares up 10.5% on Thursday morning to a record high of £11.085, driving the company’s valuation above £90bn for the first time. In October 2020, the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, its share price fell below 40p.

Its valuation has nearly doubled during 2025 and it is the fifth most valuable company on the London Stock Exchange. Rolls-Royce’s rally helped to power the FTSE 100 index of blue-chip shares to a record intraday high of 9,190 points on Thursday morning.

The company’s turnaround has been a triumph for Erginbilgiç, who ruffled feathers on taking over the business in 2023 by saying it was on a “burning platform”.

Since then he has cut costs and pushed customers to pay more for its products through renegotiating contracts for maintaining jet engines that go on wide-body planes such as the Airbus A350 and Boeing 787.

The company received a recent boost from the UK government’s decision to choose it to deliver the first small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) – factory-produced nuclear power stations that aim to cut costs.

Rolls-Royce said the SMR business, which it hopes could eventually be bigger than the existing revenues, should be “profitable and free cashflow positive by 2030”, before delivery of the first SMRs a couple of years later.

Sourse: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jul/31/rolls-royce-profits-jet-engines-shares

“Energoatom” and Rolls-Royce sign memorandum on construction of small modular reactors in Ukraine

NNEGC Energoatom President Petr Kotin and British Rolls-Royce SMR director for cooperation with partners Sophie McFarlene-Smith signed a memorandum of understanding on March 20 that envisages the construction of a power plant with small modular reactor (SMR) in Ukraine.
“Under the memorandum, Rolls-Royce SMR is committed to supporting Ukraine’s recovery by deploying a plant-based small modular reactor (SMR) power plant that will be capable of generating enough carbon-free electricity to supply a million homes for more than 60 years,” Energoatom said in Telegram on Tuesday.
Overall, the document provides an opportunity for the companies to work together to find future opportunities to deploy Rolls-Royce SMR small modular reactors (SMRs) in Ukraine as it begins to recover.
“Cooperation between Energoatom and Rolls-Royce SMR has reached a new level. Today we have signed an agreement that will give Ukraine the opportunity not only to start a high-quality post-war reconstruction of power infrastructure, but also to become one of the first countries in the world to attract promising small modular reactor technology to do so,” Kotin was quoted by the company as saying.
For his part, as Rolls-Royce SMR CEO Tom Samson noted, the British government supports Ukraine and its citizens.
“With Britain’s own nuclear technology, we can potentially help the people of Ukraine recover quickly and restore energy security and independence,” he stressed.
As reported, Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Galushchenko said last week Ukraine plans to build up to 20 SMRs as part of a “green transition” to replace the thermal generation units destroyed during the war
In turn, Petro Kotin, president of NNEGC Energoatom, said that SMRs are very promising for Ukraine and at the moment the nuclear specialists jointly with the Ministry of Energy are developing many programs with different world companies which develop technology of small modular reactors.
In particular, Energoatom is currently cooperating in the SMR direction, in addition to the British Rolies Royce, also with the American Westinghouse offering its AP-300 reactor, NuScale and Holtec International, as well as with a couple more companies with which memorandums have been signed.

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Rolls-Royce will allocate UAH 13 million to restore outpatient clinic in Sumy region

The company Rolls-Royce Power Systems AG and its employees will finance the restoration of the dispensary destroyed by shelling of the Russian army in the village of Khukhra (Sumy region), Deputy Head of the Office of the President (OP) Kyrylo Tymoshenko said on Thursday.
According to him, the cost of the project is UAH 13 million. Rolls-Royce employees have already collected part of the funds for future works, the rest will be provided by the company itself.
“A plot of land has been allocated for a new modern dispensary. The procedure for obtaining technical conditions for energy and other permitting documents is ongoing, in accordance with current building regulations and rules,” Tymoshenko said in her Telegram channel.
He also noted that a tender for construction and assembly work will be announced in September, and the dispensary itself is scheduled to open by the end of 2022.
The project is implemented in partnership with the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, the Sumy Regional Military Administration, the Kyiv School of Economics, and the Chernechshyn Territorial Community.

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