The helicopter market worldwide is improving overall Q2 and the Latin American/Caribbean market, which accounts for almost a quarter (23 percent) of world supply, is also looking up, led by Brazil, according to Aero Asset. The new Canada-based aircraft broker and dealer, started by three former Avpro employees, launched at Heli-Expo convention in March, where it issued its first quarterly report.
Aero Asset’s report is entirely focused on helicopters—something of strong interest in Brazil and in particular, São Paulo, said to be the world city with the largest fleet of helicopters.
Key findings of the company’s latest Q2 report, "Preowned Helicopter Market Trends," include: in the year to date, twin-engine sales are up across weight classes except for medium twins, which account for 30 percent of preowned transaction volumes; 63 percent of sales YTD are VIP configurations; two percent of sales YTD are airframes older than 20 years; Airbus's two-year lead time for a factory-new H145T2 is driving preowned activity (it is the most liquid twin in Q2 with only six months of supply at current trade levels); Airbus H225 preowned activity continued to grow with two trades last quarter and several units deal-pending; there were no Sikorsky S-92 trades in the second quarter; and Bell 412 and 429 pricing is set to decline in the next quarters as preowned activity is lagging.
The report lists absorption rates for types (supply for sale divided by number of transactions) and as well as quarterly and yearly trends. For example, the Bell 412 is the least liquid market Q2 and the H145 is the most liquid (considering all configurations, EMS/VIP/OGP, etc). It also splits absorption rates by weight class, light/medium/heavy.
AeroAsset's report then shows trading value spreads in graphical format, and pie charts showing regional shares of buyers and sales and splits this by aircraft ages, configuration, and weight class. For Latin America/Caribbean YTD 2019 preowned retail buyers account for 17 percent of the market with sales of $25 million of the total $188 million. Then for preowned helicopter supply, Latin America/Caribbean accounts for 23 percent worth $260 million.
Meeting with AIN at LABACE, AeroAsset research director Valerie Pereira said the company’s quarterly reports are free to all and suggested the in-depth analysis would be of interest to bankers, manufacturers, buyers and sellers. She stressed that a lot of in-house research went into finding out about particular aircraft, beyond readily available baseline data.