Brazil's top planemaker Embraer reported a 19 per cent fall in third-quarter profit due to deliveries of less profitable jets on Thursday, as its workers went on strike.
Net income reached US$52.9 million in the third quarter ended September 30, down from US$65 million during the same period last year.
During the second quarter, the company reported a loss of US$5.3 million due to the depreciating real.
Embraer said it delivered a total of 19 commercial and 25 executive aircraft in the third quarter, for a cumulative total of 58 commercial and 66 executive jets for the first nine months of 2013.
During the same period last year, a total of 83 commercial and 46 executive aircraft were delivered.
Third-quarter revenue totaled US$1.28 billion, down 8.1 per cent from a year earlier.
"Our third-quarter numbers were a little below what we expected because of some delayed deliveries," Embraer's chief financial officer Jose Antonio Filippo told reporters in a conference call.
In a statement, the aircraft maker also blamed the decline on "lower commercial aviation deliveries in 3Q13 compared to last year, combined with a mix shift toward the smaller E-Jets E170 and E175 aircraft models."
"The lower revenue and product mix shift in the quarter were the principal drivers of a decline in gross margin to 19.2 per cent in 3Q13 compared to the 25.2 per cent reported in 3Q12," it added.
Meanwhile, thousands of Embraer workers launched a 24-hour strike over pay at the company's headquarters in Sao Jose dos Campos near Sao Paulo, the Metalworkers Union said in a statement.
It was the third work stoppage at Embraer this month alone to press demands for a 10 per cent pay hike.
The union has rejected an Embraer offer of a 6.07 per cent pay increase and is also demanding a reduction of the work week to 40 hours from the current 43 hours.
It said it had no choice but to go on strike in view of the management's intransigence.
But Filippo insisted that the strike had "no impact on productivity."
Embraer is the world's third-largest commercial aircraft manufacturer, behind American Boeing and Europe's Airbus.
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