Rolls-Royce Holdings PLC (LON:RR.) has confirmed that it has received a preliminary and conditional indication of interest from Spain’s Indra Sistemas SA to buy a majority stake in its Spanish business ITP Aero.
The British engine maker has a 53.1% stake in ITP Aero, which it purchased from privately owned SENER Grupo de Ingeniería for €720mln in 2017.
Rolls-Royce said on Friday that it intends to retain a long-term relationship with the business across its civil aerospace and defence programmes.
READ: Rolls-Royce to meet full year targets as it cost of fixing Trent 1000 engine within budget
It said the indication of interest from Indra Sistemas was subject to a number of conditions and there is no certainty that this will result in a transaction.
The announcement comes as Rolls-Royce gets to work on fixing its Trent 1000 engines, which powers Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner, after turbine blades corroded faster than expected and led to the grounding of several aircraft.
In February, Rolls-Royce raised its estimate of what it expected the cash costs of the Trent 1000 programme of repairs to be by about £100mln to about £1.5bn between 2017 and 2021.
At an annual meeting last month, chief executive Warren East said the number of affected aircraft on the ground had come down from between 40 and 50 in the second half of last year to between 30 and 40 in the first quarter.