A5 Buyer Forwards ICON E-Mail To ANN

ICON Aircraft announced that it successfully closed another round of equity financing in June. The new round of investment capital is intended to take ICON through the completion of its ongoing engineering and flight test program as well as the manufacturability phase for the ICON A5 amphibious sport plane.

"The high investor confidence we're seeing in ICON is due to ICON's all-star team, the outstanding design of the A5, overwhelming market enthusiasm, ICON's growing $40 million-plus in backlogged sales, as well as the fact that the first two years of production are already presold," said ICON's CEO, Kirk Hawkins.

ICON's rigorous flight testing regimen of the A5 will continue through this year. To date, the performance of the A5 has met or exceeded the exceptionally high design standards and expectations that are central to ICON's product philosophy. The first public flight demonstration of the A5 is planned at the upcoming EAA Oshkosh Air Show held between July 27 and Aug 2 in Oshkosh, WI. The A5 will make its first public flight debut by flying into the Oshkosh Air Show for a press conference at 10:30 am on Monday, July 27. Water flying demonstrations are also planned for the A5 later that week, Friday morning, July 31, at the nearby seaplane base.

ICON announced that it is pushing out its production start date by nine months. First customer deliveries are now scheduled to begin in third quarter of 2011. This change was necessary due to the unprecedented crisis within the global capital markets beginning last fall.

"While the changes in the capital markets did affect our production start date, the current economic climate has minimal impact on ICON overall. The real economic environment that would affect ICON is more than 4-5 years away given ICON's current backlog of sales - well beyond the expected horizon of the current climate," said Hawkins. ICON continues to see exceptionally strong demand for the A5 with the aircraft position list recently passing number 400.

This news was confirmed by an ANN reader who sent us an e-mail he recieved from ICON CEO and Founder Kirk Hawkins.  The message read, in part "While the current economic climate has taken a tremendous toll on much of the aviation industry, ICON has experienced minimal impact. However, the unprecedented crisis in the global capital markets which began last fall did cause financing delays that resulted in lost time to our production schedule. Given this, we will need to push out our production start date by nine months. First customer deliveries are now scheduled to begin in the third quarter of 2011. While this decision was not easy, we're excited that it is the only change in our plans that we've been forced to make.

The good news overall is that you're early on the ICON position list, and the A5 is still the hottest, most anticipated LSA on the global market, bar none. As a reminder, your A5 deposit is held in escrow, refundable and fully transferable. Additionally, with the strong sales rate we're seeing these days and the lengthening order list that recently passed position #410, we're considering closing the order list in the coming months. If/when that announcement is made, those of you holding aircraft orders will be in the fortunate position to have an early A5 slot that others will not be able to gain access to for some time."

ICON plans to display the A5 at EAA AirVenture at Oshkosh, including a water demonstration.

FMI: www.iconaircraft.com