Company Seeks 9.5 Percent Increase

Textron Inc., parent company of Bell Helicopters and Cessna Aircraft, said it plans to increase its revenue at least 9.5 percent in 2006 from last year as sales of airplanes rebound. Sales in 2006 will be between $10.8 billion and $11.4 billion, up from $9.86 billion last year, the company said. Sales this year will fall about 2 percent from last year, in part because of a drop in deliveries of Cessna Citation business jets, it said.

Revenue at Textron, which also sells products ranging from golf carts to the V-22 Osprey military plane, has fallen for three straight years, mainly because of declining Citation deliveries. Since 2000, chief executive Lewis Campbell has sold businesses and laid off workers in an effort to reduce annual costs by $480 million by the end of 2005.

Textron will have laid off about 10,000 employees by then, reducing its work force by 18 percent in four years. The company expects to create annual cost savings of about $100 million this year and $40 million in 2005 to reach its $480 million target. Sales at the Cessna unit, the company's biggest business with $2.3 billion in revenue last year, have been dropping as struggling corporations hold back on purchases. They will probably fall to $2.1 billion this year and increase to about $2.7 billion in 2006, Textron said. It did not give figures for next year.

The company said Cessna has a backlog of 493 orders worth $3.28 billion for four business jets in development. That includes 122 orders for the CJ3, 209 for the Mustang, 56 for its Citation XLS and 106 for the Sovereign. Cessna last year delivered 196 of its six existing jet models, down a third from 2002. Its total backlog at the end of 2003 was $4.4 billion.

Textron is targeting an 11 percent to 13 percent profit margin at Cessna in 2006, up from 8.7 percent last year. That margin will be less than 9 percent in 2004, the company said.

FMI: www.textron.com