Business jets expected to drive demand for Bombardier in coming year

Bombardier Inc., the world’s third- largest maker of commercial aircraft, said it expects to hand over 5.2 percent more planes this year. Adjusted fourth-quarter profit fell 17 percent.

Deliveries will probably increase to 245 aircraft this year from last year’s 233, the Montreal-based company said today in a statement. The target comprises 190 business jets and 55 regional planes, Bombardier said.

Excluding some costs and gains, quarterly net income dropped to $188 million, or 10 cents a share, from $227 million, or 13 cents, a year earlier, Bombardier said. That’s short of a 12-cent average forecast from 21 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

Bombardier announced several contracts in the quarter, including a Dec. 6 agreement to sell at least 40 regional jets to Delta Air Lines Inc., an order with a catalog value of about $1.85 billion. Latvia’s AirBaltic AS and an unidentified carrier from the Americas also said that month that they were planning to buy at least 22 CSeries jets, a model that Bombardier is still developing, for a combined $1.63 billion.

“Bombardier looks positioned for stronger deliveries going forward as orders have picked up,” David Tyerman, an analyst at Canaccord Genuity in Toronto, said before the results were released. He advises that investors buy the stock.

The company’s widely traded Class B shares rose 4.4 percent to C$4.28 in Toronto yesterday. They have gained 14 percent since the start of the year, beating the 2.3 percent gain of the Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index.

Editors: Chris Jasper and Benedikt Kammel.

To contact the reporter on this story: Frederic Tomesco in Montreal at [email protected]. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Ed Dufner at [email protected].