If needed. Okay, this company is a pure commodities producer or player, but our guest uses up a lot of oil, or its customers do. More and more companies have been warning investors that they just have to yank their forecast because of uncertainty caused by the trade war. However, private jets seem to be doing just fine. Bombardier is in the process of rolling out the Global 8000 jet. It says this will be the world's fastest civilian aircraft since the Concorde, the late lamented Concorde. The company just posted its Q1 numbers and it is providing a forecast for the year, having yanked it, having withdrawn it earlier in the year. We are joined now by Éric Martel, CEO of Bombardier. Thank you very much indeed for joining us.
Just looking at your latest quarter, and I know it's just one quarter and yours can be a very lumpy business, but demand holding steady for business jets, revenue and profit.
Actually, you know, our profits were up 21%. Our revenues were up 19% in Q1 last year, but I think what's remarkable also is that we are still able to collect orders. You know, from the United States, you know, as there was a lot of uncertainty as you know earlier in the year. Actually, I stated that on our Q1 earnings call that in February everything was kind of paused for about a month, and then everything has been coming back to a more normal environment since then. So we have been, I would say, operating in a normal world these days.
Did you withdraw the forecast saying, look, the trade war makes it impossible, but then it turns out your planes are compliant with CUSMA, the North American trade agreement, and you don't think you are on the firing line?
We are not on the firing line. We ran with certainty at the beginning of the year like a lot of us. We were going to provide guidance the first week of February, but then there was so much uncertainty we decided not to provide it, so we never presented it. So we decided in Q1, at the end of Q1, to do that in early April, late April, to provide a forecast for the year which is in line with our target we have published in the past.
So Veritas, they have a buy on your stock. They say sure, it looks solid, the guidance. You are looking for revenue and adjusted EBITDA up 7% and 14%. And we are looking at the stock. Look how it's up more than 8-fold in the past five years.
However, they do say that relative to your original targets that you introduced in spring of 2024, it's a long time ago now, the profit and the free cash flow are a bit down from that prior time.
I would say slightly. And that's a true statement. So we decided to be a bit more on the conservative side, reflecting, I would say, the environment we are in right now. But this is like a very small difference with what we were targeting early, I would say, in '24. So we reaffirmed that guidance earlier in the year and we feel pretty good about being able to achieve it this year.
Tell us about the Global 8000. You are an engineer. How does it go so fast, almost the speed of sound, Mach 0.9?
0.94, sorry, right now. We are very pleased with that. Fastest civilian airplane since the Concorde. Actually, we had to fly it supersonic. So we flew it during testing supersonic in order to be able to certify it at 0.94.
Exactly. On YouTube actually you will be able to see that video. You see our pilot walking in and doing the test flight.
How do you make it go so fast?
Actually, you know, the airplane — one of the differences that Bombardier has compared to other OEMs we are competing with, think about Gulfstream or Dassault, is really the wing we have. We designed an engine with GE specifically for this airplane. So we were able to design, I would say, a perfect plane, and the wing with slats is something that nobody else is doing, which gives us all kind of performance advantage compared to the other OEMs.
Why is it important to some customers to be able to go that fast?
They want to be able to go fast. They want to be able to go long distance because this airplane, other than going fast, it will be the longest range airplane, 8,000 nautical miles. You can sit on that airplane for 17, 18 hours flying somewhere else, and you know, the people that buy that plane are people that very often, I like to say, are shaping up the world, chairman, CEO of a global company. They need to move around quite fast, go around the world within a week, because they have a global operation or customers all over. So I think it's a tool for them. And they are using that plane because it can do the long distance, can land pretty much anywhere, very interesting short field performance.
That was interesting. Such a high performance plane can use a pretty short runway?
