Fewer commercial helicopter deliveries contributed to lower revenue and profit at Bell in the fourth quarter, parent company Textron reported yesterday. Commercial deliveries during the three-month period totaled 57, compared with 76 in the same period a year ago.
Revenue of $871 million was down from $961 million in the fourth quarter of 2019, while profit declined by $8 million to $110 million. Lower military revenue contributed to the decline, Textron said. Backlog was $5.3 billion, compared with $6.9 billion a year ago.
On an earnings call yesterday with analysts, Textron CEO Scott Donnelly said he expects “solid margin performance” at Bell of about 12.5 percent even with lower military and commercial revenue and increased investment in research and development related to the U.S. Army’s Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) and Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) programs.
“FLRAA, we talked about a little bit, that's going into its phase two of that risk reduction phase,” Donnelly said. “So, that's fully ramped. And on the FARA program, we've actually begun component manufacturing and…initial assembly work on the flight test aircraft to get it ready for flight late next year.”
Despite lower commercial projections for 2021, Donnelly told analysts he does expect to see the beginnings of a recovery. “As you know, so much of our commercial helicopter market is international," he said. "It's just been tough to get deals closed here in 2020. So, I think we'll start to see that pick back up again, but it'll leave a little bit of a decline in 2021 for commercial orders as well.”