Mark Huber is an aviation industry veteran who has worked in the flight training, aircraft sales, aircraft component, and airport development businesses. He has flight time in more than 50 different and diverse aircraft, including helicopters, aerobatic aircraft, vintage warbirds, jet fighters, business jets and turboprops, and transport-category aircraft. He has jumped out of several of these—on purpose—with a parachute. His defense and aviation journalism has been published in a variety of national and international periodicals.

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Mark Huber

OGP operator Bristow Group revealed punishing financial results for the quarter ended March 31 and hinted for the first time that it might be forced to cancel orders or at least defer some new helicopter deliveries and will turn back some leased helicopters. Quarterly revenues fell to $375 million from $418.8 million from the year-ago period and the company reported a loss of $25.25 million versus a profit of $15 million from the year-ago period.

 


The situation would have been much worse without a big quarterly year-over-year jump in revenue from Bristow’s UK search and rescue (SAR) contract, to $62 million from $11 million, and its fixed-wing operations, to $53.5 million from $42 million, as the company saw oil and gas revenue decline 29 percent to $255 million from $360 million during the year-ago quarter. Over the last year, Bristow’s stock has lost nearly 80 percent of its value; however, the company still has $104 million in cash reserves, liquidity gained through credit lines and aggressive and continuing cost-cutting. Following the release of the results, Bristow CEO Jonathan Baliff told analysts that he thinks the company is “kind of seeing the bottom” of the market.

 


“Fiscal 2016 was a difficult and challenging year. However, the March 2016 quarter results, especially the 20-percent increase in liquidity, demonstrate the success of our cost-reduction and diversification efforts,” Baliff said. “The completion of UK SAR start-up activities, overall capital expenditure reduction and aircraft sales expected in Fiscal 2017 will strengthen our liquidity position as we lead through the downturn. In this environment, further reductions of our direct and general and administrative costs, combined with working with our OEM partners to defer additional capital expenditures into future years and lower maintenance costs, are all designed to provide additional financial flexibility necessary to successfully navigate through this downturn.”

 


Bristow CFO Don Miller said the company continued to be pinched by the strong U.S. dollar, noting that foreign exchange rates adversely affected the company by $14.7 million in the last quarter and by $98.6 million for the year.

 


Baliff said Bristow’s fleet of mainly owned Sikorsky S-92s is being used to compensate in markets adversely affected by the <a href="https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/business-aviation/2016-06-03/easa-grounds-airbus-as332-l2/ec225-lp-fleet">EASA-mandated grounding</a> of the Airbus H225 series following a <a href="https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/aerospace/2016-05-24/no-answers-yet-after-norwegian-h225-accident">fatal crash in Norway on April 29</a>. “We continue to use our mostly owned S-92 fleet in response to the grounded H225 fleet. In this challenging environment, we are seeing real success with clients signing new contracts.” 
 
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