MILITARY ORDERS AND CAPTURING THE IMAGINATIONOne of the greatest market motivators is capturing the imagination. As it pertains to Bombardier and the recent press coverage regarding military orders, I actually think there is a LOT more there than just capturing the imagination of what "could be'. Here's my thoughts.
FIrst, Eric Martell strikes me as very measured, and bright as Hell. He doesn't come off as a promoter. To the contrary, he just gets the job done. The 2nd quarter results were an amazing surprise, and not one hint was leaked in any way. Martell just got the job done, and let the results speak for themselves. I like that.
But here, in this press coverage, we see a slightly different side of Martell. He's excited, and it's actually coming through. Take a look again at some of the things he said:
a) “We’re going to be growing our defence business quite significantly.”
b) “There is a lot of interest right now in our product.”
These comments are overtly showing confidence, and beyond his more typical "muted" approach. For that to take place, I would say with certain confidence that there is more than just meets the eye here.
Now, you could easily say I'm reading too much into it here, and that is always possible. But there have been plenty of times where a change of human nature belies the reality of what is happening behind the scenes, and I've put this studdy to good use many many times. It's a read of personality, of body language, and looking for anomolies (both good and bad as the case may be) to the norm.
I'll divert here and give an example. I was heavily invested in a cancer drug startup many years back, and had the opportunity to get to know the CEO very well. I happened to be out in the city where the company was, and asked could I have a sit-down with him. We talked at length about the company, and he was muted and guarded. Now, this was part of his personality, so it wasn't that far off the mark. But we then changed to other topics that weren't related to the company, and on some of these, I saw a passionate person all of a sudden. Excited, animated, engaged. Hmmmm. I exited my position in the following days, purely based on a read of him. And it turned out to be absolutely true. The drug trial ran in to problems, money was a bigger issue for the company, and eventually, he evaporated. My point here though was that it was a personal read rather than a company read. This read was no less important.
Anyway, back to Bombardier.
That Bombardier is now DELIVERING to the U.S. military is HUGE. The procurement process for the military is exhaustive, and now that Bombardier has a solid foot in the door, or BOTH feet fully in the door, additional orders become much easier and MUCH more likely.
In this light, it's easy to understand Martell's noted excitement. He isn't just saying "We would like to grow the military division". He IS saying "We ARE growing the military division. He isn't just saying "We look forward to developing interest". He IS saying "There IS a lot of interest in our product". Then combine this with what looks to be increased miltary budgets around the world (this is also cyclical), and Bombardier again looks to be in the right place at the right time, with the best-in-class product.
I get Martel's excitment here. I do think there's more meat on the bones to his comments, and his strong statements (strong for him), show this excitement coming through.
"Reading between the lines" is ALWAYS a good thing, and in this case, I think it has every potential to be a great thing. As always, we'll see what comes, but imho there is easily another major channel for revenue that is now coming into view, and with that, another major reason to have the imagination fully captured for the great potential here for both the company, and of course for the share price.