Business: Martin’s Lead

Glenn Luther Martin looks like a Y. M. C. A. secretary and makes some of the world’s most efficient bombers. In the first nine months this year, his company sold nearly $12,000,000 worth of airplanes and equipment, netting $2,000,000. But his stockholders have never drawn a dividend, all profits having been ploughed back into the company for plant expansion.

Last week, with a $14,000,000 backlog of unfilled orders and enough new contracts in sight to keep his plant running full blast through 1940, Glenn Martin decided he needed more money for working capital and expansion. He will offer to stockholders in the ratio of one new share for each six now held 156,000 shares of Glenn L. Martin Co. common at $20 a share (last week’s market price: $33). It will be the first new financing by an important aviation company since Boeing raised $3,789,600 in June 1937. Rearmament-conscious Wall Street thought other cash-shy aircraft manufacturers might follow the Martin lead.