One of the reasons you follow Stocks.News is because we shine a light on names no one else is talking about. Not the ones getting pumped by 19-year-olds on Reddit… FTAI Aviation is one of those. And last Thursday, they got smacked. Hard.

The aircraft leasing and engine refurbishment company dropped nearly 19% in a single session after they missed Q1 expectations. Earnings per share came in at $0.87, which (yes) is only $0.10 short of the expected $0.97, but as we saw many times last week this market reacts to earnings misses the way toddlers react to bedtime. Revenue came in at $502.08 million… also just a hair shy of the $502.31 million consensus estimate. But of course, this caused Wall Street’s panic level for the stock to reach “Threat Level: Midnight.”

I watched the stock drop in real-time and thought, “This feels overdone.” FTAI’s business didn’t break. The earnings report just left some meat on the bone.

Then Friday night hit, and the SEC filings rolled in (and it all started to make sense). CEO Joe Adams bought 3,000 shares. COO David Moreno grabbed 6,580. That’s over $900,000 in personal cash at an average cost of roughly $90 per share.

And today, the market got the memo. Shares bounced 8%, and analysts who were MIA during the selloff suddenly remembered they had buy buttons. Stifel upgraded the stock from Hold to Buy, with a $123 price target, and called the selloff an overreaction. (Took them long enough.) Benchmark stuck to their guns with a $300 target, pointing out the same things we’ve been talking about: insider buys, strong fundamentals, and a long-term game plan that hasn’t changed just because the stock had a bad day.

Now let’s zoom out… FTAI Aviation’s entire business is built around one engine: the CFM56. If you’ve ever flown on a Boeing 737 or an Airbus A320, odds are it was powered by one. Over 33,000 of them are still flying globally. And they’re not just common… they’re everywhere. That gives FTAI a massive market for used parts, rebuilds, and leases.

Here’s what they do: They buy aging CFM56 engines, strip them down, refurbish the modules (usually the core and low-pressure turbine), and then lease them back out to airlines for years. Not months… years. And these aren’t pennies-on-the-dollar leases. They pull in recurring revenue with EBITDA margins that would make your favorite SaaS stock jealous.

And timing couldn’t be better. Airlines are strapped for cash. Interest rates are high. New engines are expensive, with delivery timelines stretching over a year. A new LEAP engine can cost upwards of $12 million… not including install or downtime. FTAI offers a rebuilt CFM56 at a fraction of the price with virtually no wait. For airlines trying to stretch every dollar, that’s an easy yes. It also helps that their business model is basically immune to tariffs. As CEO Joe Adams said on the call, “This isn’t a new asset being delivered… it’s typically not the target of tariffs.”

Then there’s the Strategic Capital Initiative… which in my opinion is FTAI’s secret weapon. It’s a $4 billion structure that lets them expand aggressively without drowning in debt. They raise outside capital, use it to acquire engines and aircraft, and lease those assets under long-term contracts… while keeping the liabilities off their main balance sheet. That’s how they just completed a $101 million transaction and scooped up Lockheed Martin’s 526,000-square-foot Montreal engine facility. It gives them full control over turnaround times and margins, which is huge in an industry where downtime loses tons of money.

The numbers don’t lie… FTAI’s financials are cooking. Adjusted EBITDA jumped 64% year-over-year. They reaffirmed 2025 guidance of $1.1 to $1.15 billion in EBITDA. Their current ratio sits at a healthy 3.95x, revenue growth over the past year clocked in at nearly 55%, and they’re still sitting on $348 million in cash. And did I mention the stock is down 47% from its 52-week high, trading around $97. And again… insiders just backed up the truck with nearly a million dollars.

Most companies would kill for fundamentals like this. FTAI isn’t some AI-driven hallucination. They’re not talking about “disruption.” They’re in the gritty, hands-on business of making old engines valuable again… and scaling it like pros. I’ll admit, this isn’t an exciting business the reddit crowd will lose their pants over. It’s old-school capitalism at work: buy something broken, fix it, and rent it out for more than it cost you. But in this economy, that might be the most underrated superpower on the market.

Stock.News does not have positions in companies mentioned.