This week, the aerospace industry is converging on Farnborough Airfield in England for one of the largest trade fairs in the world. Fool.com analyst Eric Bleeker shares his thoughts on day one from the air show and offers three areas for investors to continue paying attention to throughout the show. You'll find a summary of Bleeker's thoughts with some updated sales figures below.
Boeing
- Expect major buying announcements: On day one, GE's
(NYSE: GE) Capital Aviation Services unit notched orders with both Airbus and Boeing, while Boeing and Airbus scored other wins of their own. The order total now stands at more than $25 billion through three days. However, there are still more announcements coming this week. Watch for announcements from aircraft leasing companies. On its own, leasing company Air Lease has already exceeded the order total seen at last year's sluggish Paris Air Show. - Watch out for Bombardier: The Canadian upstart is positioning a plane at the tail end of Boeing's and Airbus' offerings. If it's successful, the two may need to tweak their lower-end offerings to directly compete with the Bombardier by offering new engines on the A320 and 737 series. So far, Bombardier is stuck on the tarmac. New orders haven't been materializing at the show.
- Strapped military spending: Lockheed Martin
(NYSE: LMT) will be showing off its F-35, trying to convince partners like Britain that it's a good use of strapped defense funding and unmanned aerial vehicles should be everywhere. On the first day of the show, Raytheon(NYSE: RTN) generated a lot of buzz when it showed off videos of a laser that can shoot down drones. With countries across the world looking for ways to stretch their military dollar, contractors risk not only having established programs cut, but difficulty finding budgets for new programs.
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