Is Bombardier Ready to Rebound?

Despite a difficult environment for airlines, which are struggling with higher fuel costs, President and CEO Pierre Beaudoin says the aerospace side of Bombardier's business is looking particularly good, with an order backlog than has increased 16 per cent since the beginning of the year.

There’s value, and then there’s valuation.

Beleaguered Bombardier (TSX:BBD.B) investors know there is still value in the Canadian conglomerate, which turns seventy in 2012. After all, Bombardier’s recently reported Q3 delivered double digit growth. In the Q3 ended October 31st, revenues were up 16% over the same period in 2010, and the company earned eleven cents compared to just eight cents in 2010.

Bombardier is divided into two segments that deliver roughly the same amount of revenue, Bombardier Aerospace and Bombardier Transportation. Bombardier Transportation is more profitable though, EBIT from the division was $172 million in Q3, compared to $129 million from the aerospace division.

Pierre Beaudoin, Bombardier’s President and CEO, says that despite a difficult year for airlines, which are struggling with higher fuel costs, said the aerospace side of things is looking particularly good, with order backlog than has increased 16 per cent since the beginning of the year.

And Bombardier has had recent key wins on the transportation side recently, including a $300 million victory over Siemens AG to supply 130 of its new Electrostar rail carriages for Southern, which services in South London, Surrey, Sussex and Kent.

So what about valuation?

Recent analyst action illustrated the street’s mixed feeling towards Bombardier. On December 20th, RBC analyst Walter Spracklin lowered his target price on the stock to $5 from $6, believing that the company faces “serious challenges” in an aerospace sector that is stumbling. At the same time, Spracklin upgraded the stock to Outperform because he believes that the selloff is overdone.

The Globe’s David Parkinson found that Bombardier ranks especially high in a metric that has been proven to deliver results; price-to-free-cash-flow (P/FCF) . Bombardier delivered a price to free cash flow ratio of 3.02.

Shares of Bombardier on the TSX closed December 29th at $3.96, down from a high of $7.14 on April 4th.