Mario Dumont, the only class you need. We just talked about Hydro-Québec with a former president of Hydro-Québec, but even before that. He is President and Chief Executive Officer of Bombardier. Éric Martel, hello.
Hello, Mr. Dumont. Thank you for having us.
A few years ago, when we had you on, talking about Bombardier, we asked: Is it going bankrupt? Will it survive? Will you get through the debt? Has that changed?
It has changed a lot. It's been six years since I returned to Bombardier, and we are in a completely different situation. The first few months were very difficult for me, amplified by COVID. We managed to navigate through a very complex situation. I had an excellent team in place, but today we are truly elsewhere.
Is the debt still a burden that threatens, or not at all?
Not at all. The debt has been paid off. We are now at normal debt ratios compared to our competitors. We are in a strong financial position. What's interesting is that after selling Bombardier Transportation and other assets in January 2021, we announced a five-year plan with financial targets, and not only did we meet them, but we exceeded them. That's why the market has rewarded us. I hope many Bombardier shareholders are listening because those who bought shares on the day of your appointment today must thank you. It's true, sometimes it happens to me. I was at a restaurant recently, and a man came to see me and said thank you, it was his retirement plan, he set it up, and he is happy. We were between $6 and $10, and yesterday we ended at $277. So it's been really crazy.
So it's been really crazy. Did you buy shares?
Well, I had some shares. It's part of my compensation, and we were all rewarded, my employees and I. It's an anecdote. A few weeks ago at a restaurant, a man came to see me on a Saturday evening with my wife, and he said thank you, it was his retirement plan, he set it up, and he is happy.
Because on the contrary, those who bought Bombardier shares at the peak and sold them when they dropped to a few cents, down to 30 cents. We are in a good situation now. It's almost 25 years to have a share price like today. In business jets, do you have faith in the future? Because business jets are criticized, you know, people will say, environmentalists will say, three or four people traveling, flying around the world, burning gas, you know, it's already criticized when you're 300 in a plane, but when you're three in a plane, do you think business jets will be maintained?
To put it in perspective, when we look at total emissions from all aircraft on the planet, it's about 2%, and business jets are 0.04%, so it's a small part. But per person, business jets pollute more. You have to understand, people think it's rock stars who use this, but my clients are often people who have global or local businesses, Americans who need to travel multiple times a week. They live in their fuselage, you know. One morning they're in Dubai, the next day in Singapore, two days later they have to be in New York. So these are people with installations and clients all over the world, or it can be on our smaller aircraft, the Challengers. This week, my team is touring all our service centers in the United States, and it would be impossible to do that commercially, it would take weeks. Here, they manage to do it in a week. So it's an efficiency tool, and that's how it's used.
One morning you woke up, I don't have the date in front of me, a few weeks ago, and Donald Trump said your planes won't fly in the United States because... Did you know it was coming out that evening?
