first quarter | Good start to the year at Bombardier

In addition to posting an increase in its revenue, the Quebec multinational, which has refocused on business aviation, also reported first-quarter earnings for the period ended March 31.

“Our strong performance adds to our strong results over the past two years and confirms that we are heading in the right direction,” Bombardier President and CEO Eric Martel said in a statement Monday.

The Montreal-based company reported first-quarter revenue of $1.5 billion, up 17% from a year ago, while net profit was $302 million, or $2.098 per share. In the first quarter of last year, Bombardier reported a net loss of $287 million, or $3.09 per share.

On the delivery side, they totaled 22 aircraft – 14 of the Global family and eight of the Challenger family – or one additional aircraft. At the same time last year, Bombardier also delivered three Learjets, which have been discontinued. The increase in production rate at the aircraft manufacturer was able to offset the halt in Learjet production.

“Aircraft deliveries are on track to achieve expectations of more than 138 deliveries for this year,” the company said.

For its part, the ratio of new orders to the number of deliveries was 0.9. This means that the new contracts were equivalent to deliveries during the months of January, February and March. Despite fears of a recession, the order book remained stable at US$14.8 billion.