FILE PHOTO - Lufthansa Chief Executive Officer Carsten Spohr attends the annual shareholders meeting in Hamburg, Germany May 5 2017. REUTERS/Fabian Bimmer

BERLIN (Reuters) - German airline group Lufthansa LHAG.DE has extended the contract of its Chief Executive Carsten Spohr for a further five years, with the manager set to report another record year in terms of financial results later this week.

Spohr’s contract has been extended to December 2023, Lufthansa said in a statement on Wednesday.

Spohr has been CEO of Lufthansa since 2014 and has expanded its budget unit Eurowings in the face of low-cost competition, navigated a series of strikes from staff and handled the company’s response to the crash of a Germanwings aircraft in 2015.

The group is due to report 2017 results on Thursday, with analysts on average forecasting adjusted EBIT of 2.8 billion euros ($3.46 billion).

($1 = 0.8083 euros)