Amid the Covid-19 gloom, Textron CEO Scott Donnelly sees a bright future for the company’s Bell unit. For the first quarter, Bell posted revenues of $823 million, an 11.4 percent increase from the year-ago period, driven primarily by higher military sales. Segment profit increased by $11 million, to $115 million. During the period, Bell delivered 15 commercial helicopters, half the number delivered in first-quarter 2019. Backlog at the end of the latest quarter stood at $6.4 billion.
On a conference call with stock analysts on April 30, Donnelly said the rotorcraft manufacturer’s potential new military programs—including the “Valor” V-280 tiltrotor future long-range assault aircraft (FLRAA) and “Invictus” 360 future attack reconnaissance aircraft (FARA)—were well positioned as selected semi-finalists in ongoing U.S. Army competitions. Together, those programs could collectively be worth more than $60 billion, leading Donnelly to call them “huge opportunities.” Serial production of both FLRAA and FARA is slated to begin before the end of the decade provided that the Army sticks to currently established program schedules.
“I think we feel good about both programs,” Donnelly said. Bell is slated to receive $451 million from the Army to continue work on both. Bell also stands to benefit from increasing maintenance and modification work on the current fleet of more than 375 Bell-Boeing V-22 tiltrotors that are currently in service, he said.
On the commercial helicopter side, Donnelly said Bell currently has limited exposure to the offshore energy market and collapsing oil prices as its models currently in that market—the Bell 407, 412, and 429—are primarily used to serve near-shore, low-cost production rigs. From a larger perspective, Donnelly said Bell continues to see strong civil demand from parapublic customers who are “more resilient."