Embraer chief is only looking up

摘要

At a time when some aerospace companies are seemingly hibernating until the pandemic passes, Embraer has come out swinging. By the middle of 2021, the Brazilian airframer intends to have disclosed progress on not one but two conceptual aircraft programmes. News about a proposed turboprop airliner is likely in the first quarter, followed in the second by developments around a hybrid-electric military aircraft, says chief executive Francisco Gomes Neto. He insists such projects, combined with new partnerships and diversification, will leave Embraer a larger company in 2025 than it was before the pandemic struck. "We think that, actually, five years [from now] Embraer will be bigger than... before Covid," Gomes Neto says. "From 2022 on, we expect much profitable growth." It is a bold prediction considering the position the aerospace market now finds itself in. Embraer is also in the process of stitching itself back together after having separated out its commercial aerospace unit in preparation for a planned $4.2 billion sale to Boeing, which the US firm backed out of in April 2020.