President Donald Trump is set to outline in a speech Tuesday his intentions to increase defense spending by $54 billion. But boosting defense spending is not just something the U.S. wants, the chief financial officer of the aerospace and logistics company Thales told CNBC.
"We need to consider that all western countries today are willing to increase their defense spending," Pascal Bouchiat, CFO of Thales told CNBC on Tuesday.
Earlier this month, at a NATO meeting, European countries were called upon increasing their defense contributions to the alliance. At the moment, only five members, including the U.S., respect the 2 percent of gross domestic product threshold that NATO countries agreed to back in 2014. However, NATO's secretary general has said that once it's met, such threshold should go up.
This should provide a boost to companies such as Thales. Bouchiat told CNBC that "all our businesses are driving a better growth in 2016 compared to 2015" being it civil or defense spending.
The company reported Tuesday an 11 percent increase in earnings before interest and tax for 2016, totaling 1.35 billion euros ($1.43 billion).
The French firm added that it expects earnings to increase to about 1.5 billion euros in 2017.
Bouchiat also said that the firm shouldn't benefit too much from the defense plans of Donald Trump, given that the U.S. is not its main market.
"In the U.S., we don't sell that much to the defense sector as oppose to what we sell in defense in Europe and in particular in the Middle East," he said.