is predicting sharply higher financial results on several key metrics for the coming year as the Canadian luxury jet maker continues to pull in wealthy customers who are shrugging off recession fears.
“The resilient start to 2023 for bizjets and luxury goods shows that high net worth individuals are still spending, and that the macroeconomic slowdown is a two-tailed story that is not affecting high vs low-income consumers equally,” Desjardins Capital Markets analyst Benoît Poirier said in a research note ahead of the published results. “We expect this trend to continue.”
Free cash flow should come in higher than US$250-million for the coming year compared to last year’s US$735-million, the company said. Its backlog of orders stood at US$14.8-billion at the end of December, a rate analysts believe equates to more than two years of production. Mr. Martel is expected to provide more details about his ambitions for the defense business in a speech to the Canadian Club of Toronto later in the day. Late last year, he voiced concerns over reports the Canadian government was considering a multi-billion dollar purchase of P-8 Poseidon reconnaissance jets directly from Boeing Co. instead of tapping its home-grown aerospace industry through an open bidding process.