Posted on May 24th, 2011
There is “uneven progress” toward recovery, JPMorgan said in its latest business jet market update. “We now have updates from OEMs following the first quarter,” JPMorgan aerospace analyst Joseph Nadol III said, “and we still see a meaningful disparity between new demand for large and small aircraft, with Gulfstream’s book-to-bill coming in just above 1.0x while Cessna reported net cancellations.
There were also mixed signals in the pre-owned market, the investment firm noted. For-sale pre-owned jet inventories declined by another 0.3 percent to 10.8 percent last month, setting a post-recession low, but prices fell yet again.
Asking prices declined by 2 percent, according to JPMorgan data. “While the inventory trend is a leading indicator that has been pointing in the right direction for months,” Nadol said, “pricing had only just begun to stabilize, and we view improvement here as a more near-term indicator of new jet demand.
Regarding the April pricing reversal, Nadol admitted that it is only one month of data and that it might not correlate directly with new aircraft sales. On the latter point, he noted, “We saw pricing fall the most for heavy jets, where new jet demand is most robust.
Meanwhile, the JPMorgan report indicates that China “was a key driver of order activity for Gulfstream in the first quarter, and Chinese demand is strongly contributing to the demand for the Bombardier Global family and the planned increase in production rates.”
