(Rewrites with share move, analyst comment)
By Ulf Laessing
SCHORSSOW, Germany, April 26 (Reuters) - Europe's largest aerospace firm EADS said Airbus A380 jumbo sales would boost its revenues by a third and double its operating margin by 2007, sending its shares to near three-year highs on Monday.
Joint Chief Executive Rainer Hertrich said in remarks embargoed for Monday the firm aimed to grow its annual sales to 40 billion euros ($47.25 billion) by around 2007 and its EBIT (earnings before interest and tax) profit margin to 10 percent.
By 1057 GMT, EADS shares had soared 8.8 percent to 21.82 euros, helped by detailed figures given by Airbus on Monday of its supply plans for the A380, which is set to break U.S. arch-rival Boeing's monopoly of the jumbo market.
The French blue-chip CAC-40 index edged up 0.3 percent.
Airbus Chief Operating Officer Gustav Humbert told journalists at a press event the company planned to supply between 10 and 14 A380s to airlines in 2006, when the superjumbos will begin flying.
Airbus would supply 30 to 35 of the planes in 2007, Humbert said at the event in Germany's Schorssow castle in West Pomerania, with a further 45 to 48 in 2008.
"The statements made this morning are quite bullish, I would say, in particular the sales and EBIT margin forecasts," said one London-based analyst.
A senior Paris trader said the air sector in general had been boosted by Boeing's announcement on Monday that it had netted the biggest commercial jet launch order in its history, to supply 50 7E7 jets to All Nippon Airways .
He said EADS stock was also supported by the fact that it had breached a resistance level at 21 euros.
U.S. HOPES
Hertrich said he aimed to overtake Boeing in all EADS business areas within 10 years. EADS owns 80 percent of Airbus, which generates almost 90 percent of EADS's operating profit and outsold Boeing in 2003 for the first time in three decades. The rest of Airbus is owned by BAE Systems Plc .
He reiterated EADS's 2004 targets, saying EBIT should grow to 1.8 billion euros ($2.1 billion) on flat sales, and added that defence orders on hand should reach 50 billion euros by the year end.
Hertrich said EADS was now hopeful of beating Boeing to win a contract to supply billions of dollars of aerial refuelling tankers to the U.S. Air Force after this autumn's presidential elections in the United States.
The Pentagon has stalled a plan to go with Boeing pending the results of investigations into issues including whether the Air Force improperly slanted its stated requirements to match Boeing tanker features, and may be forced to reopen bidding.
"I see a realistic chance that the issue will be taken up again by the administration after the election," Hertich said.
EADS won a $1.5 billion deal earlier this month to supply tanker aircraft to Australia, three months after the Franco-German company beat Boeing to a British tanker order.
EADS also confirmed industry sources' estimates that the NATO "Eye in the Sky" surveillance system contract, awarded to a consortium led by EADS earlier this month, was worth around four billion euros.
"It should be in that order of magnitude," EADS defence chief Tom Enders said.
EADS space unit board member Josef Kind said the company wanted to establish a joint venture with Finmeccanica unit Alenia Spazio to operate the Columbus laboratory on the International Space Station by the end of the year.
And defence and communication systems chief Stefan Zoller told Reuters on the fringes of the event that EADS was in talks with Kazakhstan on a deal to supply a radar system to its air force, potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Hertrich said he expected the company's shareholder structure to remain stable over the next two to three years.
DaimlerChrysler currently has a 30-percent stake in EADS, while the French government and French magazine publisher Lagardere each have 15 percent. Lagardere has said it will hold onto its stake until 2006. (Additional reporting by Marie Maitre in Paris)