Bell Helicopter Adjusting to Civil Market 'Softness'

Bell Helicopter’s new 525 Relentless super-medium twin will fly “very soon,” even as the company grapples with continuing military and commercial market softness and is “adjusting production levels and taking additional cost actions to maintain margins,” Scott Donnelly, chairman and CEO of parent company Textron, said today. Those adjustments include continuing layoffs, and Bell expects one-time charges of $40 to $50 million.

During the quarterly call with analysts this morning, Donnelly revealed that Bell’s revenue declined by $60 million year-over-year, attributable mainly to declining deliveries of the company’s bread-and-butter V-22 tiltrotor to the U.S. military, and “continuing softness” in the medium sector of the commercial market.

The company delivered 35 commercial helicopters in the first quarter versus 34 in the same period last year. Notably, it did not ship any Bell 412s in the quarter, Donnelly said. On the military side, Bell delivered six V-22s and four H-1s in the first three months, compared with eight V-22s and five H-1s a year ago. Bell’s order backlog dropped to $5.3 billion, a decline of $237 million from the end of the fourth quarter.