Since the appointment at the beginning of 2006 of Itzhak Nissan as president and CEO of Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), the company’s finances have undergone a radical improvement–a fact underlined by a massively oversubscribed public bond issue concluded earlier this month. Finalized on June 7, the bond issue generated a demand 87 times greater than the $250 million offered, reflecting the excellence of recent profit, sales and backlog figures.
On his arrival in office, Nissan instigated wide-ranging management and business culture changes. Fifteen months later the figures showed dramatic improvement: FY06 net profit was $130 million as opposed to the FY05 figure of $2 million; 2007’s first-quarter pretax profit was $60 million compared with $24 million for the same period in 2006; sales for 2006 were $2.8 billion, up around 20 percent over the previous year; and first-quarter sales for 2007 were 37 percent up on 2006 figures. Finally, backlog orders stood at $7.2 billion at year-end 2006, compared with $6.3 billion at the end of 2005.
