Azimut Benetti's EUR 2.5bn order book pushes new builds toward 2029

How big is Azimut Benetti's backlog, and how long is the wait for a new build?

EUR 2.5bn in new orders has been secured since January 2025 alone, on top of a 2024/25 revenue forecast of EUR 1.5bn (+15%), and that volume of business is why delivery slots are now running out to 2029 rather than the 2-3 years that was typical a few years ago.

Azimut Benetti expects revenues of EUR 1.5bn for the 2024/25 nautical season, a 15 per cent rise on the previous year and in line with its own business plan. The backlog secured since 1 January 2025 stands at EUR 2.5bn and extends into 2029. The group presents that figure as evidence for its consolidation target in financial 2025/2026.

BOAT International's Global Order Book 2026 then confirmed the group as the world's largest builder for the 26th consecutive year, with 163 yachts and 5,924 metres under construction, 23 per cent of the global market. The same order book has contracted in unit count for a second consecutive year while average length and tonnage under construction sit at record highs. A builder of that scale carrying a four-year backlog is the clearest available signal that the top of the market has already been bought.

Where is demand for Azimut Benetti yachts actually concentrated?

The backlog splits close to evenly three ways - roughly 38% Europe, 31% Americas and 31% Middle East/Asia-Pacific by the company's own disclosure - so no single region is carrying the order book alone, which is itself part of why the queue keeps growing even as any one market cools.

This is not a backlog concentrated in one region that a buyer can simply wait out. The group puts 38 per cent of it in Europe, 31 per cent in the Americas and 31 per cent across EMEA and APAC, the last of those up from 23 per cent a year earlier. Europe holds its share on the back of the dealer network and the models that established the brands there.

The Middle East is driving the shift. Azimut Benetti reports more than EUR 300m of sales in Saudi Arabia over 24 months and is opening two offices to service it, Azimut in Jeddah and Benetti in Riyadh. Buyers in that market tend to commit quickly and specify large, which shortens the queue for nobody else. The Asia Pacific presence is older and runs through dealers across Japan, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Australia and New Zealand.

Why is the US being treated as a special case despite new tariffs?

Even with fresh US tariffs on superyachts under 30 metres flagged by trade press as an industry headwind, Azimut Benetti is expanding there rather than retreating - opening exclusive boutiques at Fort Lauderdale's Pier Sixty-Six in autumn 2025 - because the Americas still supply roughly a third of the group's order book and the tariff exposure is concentrated in the smaller end of the range, not the full-custom flagships.

The Americas hold 31 per cent of the backlog and the group describes itself as the category leader in the United States. It also names that market as its most challenging. The reason it gives is the new import tariffs.

That matters to a buyer more than a share-of-backlog percentage does. A tariff lands on the landed cost of an imported hull, which means the delivered price of an Italian yacht into a US port is now a moving number set outside the shipyard. Anyone contracting for delivery in the second half of the decade is signing before that variable is settled, which puts the tariff clause alongside the escalation clause as something to negotiate and not simply accept.

What does the EUR 115m figure actually pay for?

It is not the price of any yacht - it is Azimut Benetti's own 2024-2027 capital investment across its Italian shipyards, funding the Avigliana headquarters expansion for 28-metre production, the Lusben refit division, a new Light Steel Hub for hulls under 45 metres, and a Composite Hub in Tuscany for megayacht materials, i.e. the capacity that lets the group keep filling a book that already runs to 2029.

The investment plan runs to EUR 115m across all the group's Italian sites over 2024 to 2027, covering production facilities and headquarters. The stated priority is the shipyards themselves. Avigliana is being upgraded to build yachts of up to 28 m, and the areas given over to high-value work are expanding, including the refit projects handled by the Lusben division.

None of that arrives in time to shorten a queue that already reaches 2029. Yard capacity is measured in build halls and travel lifts, and both take years to commission. The refit expansion is the part with a nearer-term effect, because it enlarges the group's capacity to work on boats that already exist.

What should a buyer realistically expect when ordering into an already-full book?

Expect the delivery year, not the spec, to be the first thing negotiated: rival yards show the identical pattern - Ferretti's backlog hit a record EUR 1.77-1.8bn in Q1 2025 and Sanlorenzo's EUR 1.44bn book runs deliveries to 2028 - so a buyer is choosing a queue position across the whole top tier of the industry, with schedule slippage a known risk rather than a remote one.

The realistic conversation about a new group build this decade starts with delivery in its back half, which makes the contract more important than the brochure. The delivery date needs real remedies attached and escalation needs a cap, because a signed slot has become an asset in its own right. Italian builders account for 52 per cent of global superyacht production by projects ordered or under construction, so switching yards inside Italy does not switch the underlying constraint.

The alternatives are taking over a late-stage contract from an existing buyer or paying the brokerage market's premium for immediacy. Both are being priced accordingly. The builder is no longer waiting for buyers, and buyers are waiting for the builder.