A market still positive (a CIBC report)From Transportation and aerospace weekly
Key Points
While there is a growing concern of a recession over the next six to twelve months, the business aviation market expects to weather this storm given industry fundamentals. This past week, Aviation Week released its Business Aviation Fleet & MRO forecast and predicts deliveries of more than 8,700 new business jets and nearly 2,700 turboprops valued at US$273.7B over the 10-year-period from 2023 through 2032. Key points from the report are:
- Unit deliveries are projected to be led by light jets at 29% of all jet deliveries, followed by ultra-long-range business jets, super midsize jets, very light jets, large jets and midsize jets.
- By retail delivery value, new ultra-long-range jets (US$133.5B) and large cabin jets (US$42.4B) will lead all other categories, which bodes well for BBD’s Global platform.
- North America will reflect US$159B of those deliveries, followed by Western Europe at US$51B.
- By aircraft family, Textron’s business jets are projected to make up the largest segment of the market during the decade with 18.2% of total shipments (smaller than BBD) , followed by Gulfstream with 14.4%, the Cirrus SF50 Vision jet with 8.6% (a very small plane) , Bombardier Global business jets at 6.5% and Embraer Phenom jets at 6.0%.
- Over this 10-year period, 6,500 legacy business jets and turboprops are expected to be retired, with yearly retirements peaking in 2032 at 862 aircraft.
- Net-net, this will result in the global in-service fleet of business jets and turboprops growing from 34,659 aircraft in 2023 to 38,848 in 2032, representing a 1.3% CAGR.
What continues to drive this optimism in the face of the current economic uncertainty is the strong backlogs and much lower production rates versus what we saw entering the Great Financial Crisis. On the former, order backlogs at the world’s five largest manufacturers totaled US$46.7B at the end of Q2/22, up 20% from US$38.8B in 2021 and up from US$27.3B in 2020, according to data from JetNet. Pricing has also been healthy as used aircraft inventory remains low. Retail pre-owned business jet transactions in H1/22 totaled 3,605, compared to 3,642 transactions for the full year in 2021. On the latter, in 2007/08, OEMs were producing 1,300 jets versus running at roughly half that level today.
Overall, we continue to see a healthy business aviation market which bodes well for BBD and CAE.