Shares in Rolls were up 8 percent in midday trading after the company said earlier on Friday it would exceed its 2020 guidance for free cash flow of 1 billion pounds for 2020 and as it announced new ambitious mid-term goals.

"It would be hard to dispute 1.2 billion pounds in 2020. If pushed, that would be a kind of sensible guide to be thinking around that number now that we've said we do expect to exceed a billion pounds," Chief Financial Officer Stephen Daintith said in reply to an analyst question.

But he qualified that there were some risks to that.

"We're in the middle of managing pretty significant issues on the Trent 900 and 1000 and how that evolves that's a risk around the business so don't treat that as a hard and fast number," he said.

(Reporting by Sarah Young; editing by Costas Pitas)