UPDATE 1-Thales keeps margin goals after resilient 2011
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UPDATE 1-Thales keeps margin goals after resilient 2011

www.reuters.com   | 07.02.2012.

* Sees EBIT margin at 5 pct in 2011, 6 pct in 2012 (Adds detail from statement, background)
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* Sees EBIT margin at 5 pct in 2011, 6 pct in 2012 (Adds detail from statement, background)

PARIS Feb 7 (Reuters) - Europe's largest defence electronics group, Thales, stuck to its margin goals for last year and 2012 after posting roughly flat 2011 order intake and revenue, helped by a surge in the civil aircraft industry.

Revenue slipped 1 percent to 13.03 billion euros ($17.3 billion) last year, while order intake rose 1 percent to 13.21 billion, Thales said in a statement on Tuesday.

Thales said it still expected to achieve a 5 percent operating margin in 2011, rising to 6 percent this year.

This was underpinned by "the good resilience of order intake and revenues recorded over the year although the economic environment worsened more markedly than expected - particularly in defence activities", Thales said.

Analysts on average expected revenue of 13.2 billion euros, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S consensus estimates. Operating profit is seen at 684 million euros for last year, with a margin of 5.2 percent.

The state-controlled French group makes cockpit systems and in-flight entertainment panels for airliners and military hardware including drones. It builds the radar for the Dassault Aviation Rafale, which scored a breakthrough by emerging as preferred bidder in a contest in India last week.

A surge in civil aerospace demand on the back of large aircraft orders at key clients Airbus and Boeing has been compensating for weaker defence and security revenue resulting from budget pressures in Europe.

Thales said its book-to-bill ratio was 1.01 last year, in line with its target and implying new orders about matching revenue.

Reporting nine-month sales in November, Thales had forecast full-year revenue slightly up on 2010.

Thales logged several major orders last year, including a more than 1 billion-euro contract to upgrade India's Mirage 2000 jets, a secure communications network for the future headquarters of the French defence ministry and an in-flight entertainment system for Qatar Airways.

The Mirage contract made up for a drop in orders at its space business, Thales said.

The group's total order book amounted to 30.7 billion euros at the end of the year, it added. ($1 = 0.7552 euros) (Reporting by James Regan; Editing by Lionel Laurent)



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