Aerospace companies in lift as planemakers make comeback
BRITISH aerospace suppliers Meggitt, Senior and Cobham yesterday said they had started 2012 well, boosted by robust demand from commercial planemakers as the sector recovers from a slump triggered by the global economic crisis.
Meggitt, which supplies flight displays and wheels to planemakers Airbus and Boeing, said it was confident it would deliver full-year revenue growth in excess of 10 per cent, driven largely by growth at its civil aerospace unit. Aero engineer Senior said first quarter profit had been slightly ahead of its expectations, helped by a healthy backlog of work from the world’s big two planemakers. Meanwhile Aero electronics group Cobham said organic revenue growth had been modestly positive in the first three months of 2012 and that its order book had increased slightly to £2.5bn. Earlier this month Cobham renewed its £270m bid for Danish electronic engineer Thrane & Thrane. Boeing turned in a stronger-than-expected quarterly profit on Wednesday as the company was able to ramp up production to meet demand.