Preowned business jet sales in August have dropped by a third from a year ago but still inched up by 2 percent from July, according to market analyst Jefferies.
Citing Amstat data and its own estimates, Jefferies said the 33 percent year-over-year (YoY) slide was broad-based with preowned heavy jet sales leading the way, down by 38 percent. But available inventory continues to shrink, down 27 percent YoY for aircraft less than seven years since manufacture. At the same time, pricing is up 20 percent.
The latest market update from Jefferies shows 673 preowned aircraft were available for sale this month, up from 660 in July but down from 1,008 a year ago. The available inventory is about 2.7 percent of the total fleet—including all models and vintages—and down from the one-year average of 2.9 percent.
Proportionate to sales, heavy jet inventories are down 38 percent YoY, while medium jet inventories declined by 33 percent and light jets 31 percent.
Looking at younger aircraft (those up to seven years old), available Dassault Falcon inventories are down 50 percent YoY with eight aircraft for sale. Bombardier inventories shrunk by 39 percent from last year to 50 aircraft with Globals down 59 percent and Learjets 41 percent. No Global 7500s are for sale, Jefferies reported.
Gulfstream inventories similarly contracted 38 percent YoY to 36 available aircraft accounting for just 1.9 percent of the fleet. The drop comes as there were 12 fewer G550s available and eight fewer G280s.
Embraer followed with a 14 percent year-over-year inventory decline, and Cessna Citation inventories were down 12 percent.
List prices overall stabilized from July but were still up 20 percent from a year ago with Bombardier seeing a 29 percent jump in preowned pricing, Embraer 26 percent, Cessna 21 percent, Gulfstream 19 percent, and Dassault 5 percent.