Rolls-Royce profit up 4%, says 2011 outlook good

Rolls-Royce posted a 4% rise in full-year profit, helped by solid growth at its civil aerospace and energy units and said it had paid most of the costs associated with last year's technical setbacks.

The world's second-largest maker of aero engines on Thursday reported an underlying pretax profit of 955 million pounds (USD 1.54 billion) on revenues 6% higher at 11.08 billion pounds for the year to the end of December 2010.

The company had been expected to post an average pretax profit of 939 million pounds for the year, according to a poll of 22 analysts by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Rolls increased its final payment to shareholders by 6.7% to 9.60 pence per share.

Rolls suffered technical setbacks on two major programmes last year. A Qantas Airbus A380 suffered a partial engine failure in service, while on Boeing's 787 programme, engine failure during ground testing led to further delays for the entry-in-service of the new plane.

The company said the bulk of the anticipated costs associated with Qantas incident had been recognised in the 2010 results.

It added that profits in 2011 were expected to see good growth benefiting from strong trading in civil aerospace.

Shares in Rolls-Royce closed at 656 pence on Wednesday, valuing the company at around 11.7 billion pounds.