Modest Pre-Tax Gains After '05 Losses

Whole-airplane parachute recovery systems manufacturer Ballistic Recovery Systems, Inc. announced this week a total of $9,191,729 in sales for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2006. This total represents an increase of 13.3% over last year's sales.

BRS tells Aero-News the company reported income before taxes of $45,577 for the year ended September 30, 2006. That may not sound like much... but it's a big improvement compared to a loss before taxes of $1,762,764 for the year ended September 20, 2005.

"We are pleased with our fourth quarter and full year performance as well as our ability to achieve consistent growth in revenue and a return to profitability," said BRS Chief Executive Officer Larry E. Williams. "We continued to benefit from ongoing market expansion efforts as reflected by the increase in sales over FY05, especially in the recreation/Light Sport Aircraft area where we saw 47 percent growth over last year. We are seeing unprecedented success in market acceptance of whole airplane emergency recovery parachutes."

"With the addition of new applications such as the Diamond D-Jet, we have undertaken a significant investment in operations and engineering to respond to market demand," Williams added. "Labor and operating expenses reflected continuing improvement and the early payment of debt associated with last year’s legal settlement will result in lower overall interest expense over the $132,249 we experienced in FY06."

Even better than reporting a better fiscal outlook, however, is the news BRS also recently learned of the 199th save by one of the company's 'chutes.

“Our most important achievement is the result of the use of our products,” commented BRS Chairman, Robert L. Nelson. He continued, “The Board earlier this year committed additional funding to research and development with the goal to increase applications and get our product on more airplanes. As we see the growing use of BRS systems, more and more lives will be saved.”

Chief Financial Officer Donald Hedquist said, “We had great improvement in earnings notwithstanding the fact that we had increased insurance costs associated with the Cirrus product liability coverage, had increased debt payments, completed integration of the Mexican acquisition and met operational goals we set at the beginning of the year. The experienced management team, the strength of our international distribution network and certainly our successful renegotiation of the Cirrus contract, all contributed greatly to our improvement in FY06.”

BRS is a South St. Paul, MN-based company that designs, manufactures and distributes whole-plane emergency parachute systems for use on general aviation and recreational aircraft. Since 1981, BRS has delivered more than 25,000 parachute systems to aircraft owners around the world.

FMI: www.brsparachutes.com