Story ID: 
Supply-chain Woes Weigh on Gulfstream Deliveries
By: Chad Trautvetter
Caption: Company now expects to miss 2023 delivery forecast of 145 by up to six business aircraft due to supply-chain issues.
Word Count: 294
Gulfstream Aerospace delivered 45 aircraft (35 large-cabin and 10 super-midsize G280s) in the first half of 2023, down from 47 (38 large-cabin and nine G280s) a year ago, and will miss its 2023 delivery forecast of 145 by five or six units, Phebe Novakovic, chairman and CEO of parent company General Dynamics, said this morning during a quarterly investor call. In the second quarter, the Savannah, Georgia-based aircraft manufacturer handed over 24 aircraft (18 large-cabin and six G280s), up from 22 jets (17 large-cabin and five G280s) in the same period last year.
According to Novakovic, Gulfstream expects to deliver 27 aircraft in the third quarter, meaning almost half of this year’s aircraft handovers—approximately 68—will be in the fourth quarter. Nineteen of these will be for the G700, which is now slated to receive FAA certification in the fourth quarter and allow “sufficient time” for delivery by year-end, she said. The five or six jets that will not be delivered this year “are not G700s,” Novakovic noted, and are related to supply-chain issues.
Meanwhile, order intake for Gulfstreams remains robust, with a book-to-bill of more than 1.3:1 in the second quarter. Novakovic said demand for its business jets is “robust” in North America, specifically citing Fortune 500 companies as the biggest driver, in addition to the Middle East and Asia.
First-half revenues at General Dynamics’s aerospace division, which also includes Jet Aviation, was up 2 percent year-over-year in the first half, to $3.845 billion, while earnings dipped 3.3 percent, to $465 million. Due to the expected fewer deliveries at Gulfstream and weaker sales at Jet Aviation, Novakovic downgraded 2023 forecast revenues for this division by $200 million, to $10.2 billion.
Gulfstream's backlog stood at $19.497 billion at the end of the quarter, about $700 million higher than a year ago.