Shares of Textron Inc. were rising about 9% in premarket trading Tuesday after the company announced that its Bell business won a U.S. Army development contract for the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) program. Bernstein analyst Doug Harned wrote that the FLRAA “will ultimately replace the Black Hawk” and that while the initial award could get up to $1.3 billion in value, “the program could lead to revenues well in excess of $40 billion through 2050.” Harned said that he saw the odds of Textron’s win here near 50/50, with Lockheed Martin Corp. and its primary subcontractor Boeing Co. as the competition, though he suspected the market was more “heavily skewed” toward a win for Textron. “The Textron win takes, what we saw as a key risk for the stock, off the table,” he continued. Textron shares have lost about 9% so far this year as the S&P 500 has declined 13%.
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