She made it clear she intended some day to be CEO, and she may have seen it wasn't going to be as readily achievable as she thought,
Obviously, there's been pent-up demand that has materialized since 9/11. Everyone stopped buying for a while.
Obviously, as they go down to one fuselage a month from four or five, there are going to be lower levels of operating earnings and margins. It stands to reason that it's an inefficient rate of production.
...He knows what he's doing. I think we'll just see a very good team being formed here that will carry on with what Debbie Hopkins started. We have a 'buy' on it. We feel that it was a good move to get this over with quickly. We've always had the utmost regard for Mike Sears.
I think it could embolden other companies if they succeed to cut back on health care costs by passing it off on other employees.
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.
I think this thing quite possibly could go a lot more than a month or two,
We'll probably have orders that may be no more than half of what we had last year.
The quarter looks good and it's pretty much across the board. Their military work in all sectors was strong, as was their aircraft.
We don't know if it's a momentary problem or one that's more long-standing, ... The fact that they haven't indicated whether it's momentary probably has everybody spooked, figuring it's a heavy hit for the year.
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.
There's some money being spent in the replacement of weapons and munitions that are heavily used.
They were flying a lot of empty planes. They don't want that to happen again.
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.
There really wasn't any improvement on the defense side from a year ago. I can see why Wall Street isn't too delighted by it. But it's a temporary thing.
It's a tough business, ... You are bidding set prices on multi-dimensional construction projects and the competition is very steep.
It must be in the military side. I think there's some profit-taking going on.
The airlines have gone after the delivery slots at the same time like lemmings. It's pushed the industry to what looks like an order peak and makes it not likely to be repeated any time soon.
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.
They'll pay whatever they have to get it. They obviously see a good strong market there, perhaps associated with homeland security.
There undoubtedly are airlines out there that would prefer not to take the huge step to the A380 but want something better than what they already have,
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.
I'm sure that this is one of the things that has been thought through by Northrop, and probably the reason they hesitated so long.
If you aren't coming up with enough of an improvement in performance, there's really no reason to proceed with it.
Investors obviously aren't concerned with it. I'm surprised, and I don't think he should have done it. But he doesn't make his living from writing.
Honeywell is trying to offset the horrible situation they have on the commercial side. Any news about this (from Honeywell) is like having a bucket of water thrown on you with the events of Sept. 11 and trying to dry it off with a small handkerchief.
I don't think the U.S. Congress or even the Department of Defense is going to be interested in subsidizing the French economy with that kind of money, ... If Airbus was a (British) company, rather than predominantly French and German, I think it would be very different.
The major disappointment was perhaps the lack of revenue growth. If you look at each of the (defense unit) segments, they all with one exception seem weaker than anticipated.
The Chinese market is probably going to be as strong as any single country in the world over the next 20 years, ... so it's certainly one that Boeing wants to continue to be dominant in.
All the defense companies -- with very few exceptions -- have been doing extremely well with mostly double-digit earnings growth. And it's not just the military side, it's the commercial side as well. We're in the early stages of a maybe five-year up cycle.