The market has entered a healthy stabilization phase after the roller coaster years of 2020 and 2021, according to Paul Cardarelli, vice president of sales for JetNet, in a review of the current year-to-date data while at the National Business Aviation Association’s Business Aviation Convention and Exhibition (NBAA-BACE) in Orlando, Florida.
JetNet has also acquired Asset Insight, the company announced.
Market Data
The pre-owned market, in particular, appears to have peaked in mid-2021, with roughly 3,600 aircraft sold, Cardarelli said.
However, with just around 1,000 aircraft in used inventory, the market still exhibits symptoms of the past two years and the influx of demand from new-to-aviation buyers. In fact, it’s the lowest level of inventory since 2006, the beginning point of JetNet data.
“[It’s a] very depleted market of inventory,” Cardarelli said. In trying to predict what the rest of the year would hold, he based the assessment both on historic action as well as changing assumptions. “[Q4] is always a very robust quarter,” he said. “And last year was particularly robust. Of all the transactions in 2021, it was 29.5 or [29.6] percent of those that occurred in the fourth quarter. If we have so robust a quarter again, that gets the net total up to 3,000, maybe 3,100—not getting anywhere near the 3,600 that we did before [in 2021].”
The book-to-bill ratio reported by the “top 5” OEMs in business aviation—Bombardier, Dassault Aviation, Embraer, Gulfstream, and Textron Aviation—shows that the backlogs have been replenished after taking a hit in 2020 with the pandemic. They show a total of $47 billion in backlog overall, but JetNet consultant Rolland Vincent said in the update he doesn’t expect those levels to be sustained.
The lag between order and delivery tends to “bring demand down,” Vincent said.
Asset Insight
JetNet’s acquisition of Asset Insight was announced by JetNet CEO Greg Fell. “We’ve had the opportunity to work with Asset Insight as a partner over the course of many years and know how strategic the company’s valuation and cost-of-ownership products are to our customer base,” he said. “Tony Kioussis [president and CEO of Asset Insight] is a highly respected and talented expert in the aviation industry who we are excited to have join the JetNet team.”
Asset Insight is an experienced aviation-focused valuation firm, and the creator of eValues, a real-time valuation tool.
