Bell wrapped up the first quarter of 2021 with slightly higher commercial deliveries that also drove revenue up for the Fort Worth-based helicopter OEM, parent company Textron reported yesterday. Commercial helicopter deliveries for the three-month period totaled 17, compared with 15 in last year’s first quarter.
“We saw solid order activity in the quarter across our commercial [helicopter] models, both domestically and internationally and across multiple end markets, including corporate, private, utility, and emergency medical services,” Textron president and CEO Scott Donnelly said during an earnings call yesterday with analysts.
Quarterly revenue at Bell was $846 million, an increase of $23 million from last year, while segment profit slipped $10 million, to $105 million, largely because of higher research and development costs for the Army’s future vertical lift programs. “On [Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft], Bell is continuing with its build of the Invictus 360 prototype, where we are about a third of the way through the manufacturing process in anticipation of first flight in Q4 of next year,” Donnelly explained.
Meanwhile, Bells' backlog at the end of the quarter was $5.2 billion versus $5.3 billion at the end of last year.