Subscription Required

By Chris Sloan
Feb. 1, 2024, © Leeham News: Aerospace continued its upward trajectory share of Allegheny Technologies' overall business, the metals marker reported in its fourth-quarter earnings call.

"We made significant progress toward our strategy of aerospace and defense leadership, reaching 63% of total sales from those markets in the fourth quarter, up 10 percentage points over last year," said Robert S. Wetherbee, Board Chair and CEO - noting the company is closing in on its 65% target.

Overall, ATI's Q4 sales of $1.06bn were up 5% year over year. Full-year 2023 sales increased by 9% to $4.17bn over 2022. "ATI delivered a strong finish to 2023, with the highest quarterly revenue of the year," reported the chief executive.

ATI is managing challenges up and down the supply chain and within its own house, including materials input costs inflation, furnace maintenance and outages, inventory control, Pratt's GTF troubles, and the continued saga of changes in MAX production rates and deliveries, which have only become cloudier. "Aerospace and defense is a complex industry, and we're living in complicated times," A seemingly unphased Wetherbee admits. Yet, he remains confident despite "demand signals aren't always clear." ATI doesn't "cast or melt anything that doesn't have a specific order, so it must be ready to meet demand as it comes. A relentless campaign of "debottlenecking everywhere" underpins the business model.