Both of them were better than the Street had expected, they are both doing very well. Lockheed is doing a bit better because they don't have the shipbuilding problems that Northrop has.
Boeing?s talking about assembling these planes in a few days because everything they?re getting will be so complete.
Obviously, there's been pent-up demand that has materialized since 9/11. Everyone stopped buying for a while.
We'll probably have orders that may be no more than half of what we had last year.
They (defense stocks) are above normal prices, but that is based on above-normal expectations. If those expectations are dashed by one or two companies, they are certainly going to feel it in their stock prices.
They (defense companies) are beginning to settle down in their operations at a much higher level than they were three or four years ago as they become much more efficient. What we are seeing now is some fear (of budget cuts) being dissipated by the strong performance.
After the huge orders that were placed in December, I think it's quite reasonable to expect that there would be a shortage of them in January.
They (results) were well above expectations, it was a good quarter. I would expect most of these defense firms to flatten out as far as top-line growth is concerned, but for a while at least they are going to maintain growth in the bottom line.
They threw sand in the production engine. They're getting the planes out, but at a high cost.
I think the group was held back by overly pessimistic Wall Street forecasts until about November of last year. And then the budget information began to leak and it was much more positive than most had been anticipating.
