By LuAnn LaSalle, The Canadian Press

MONTREAL - Quebec aerospace manufacturer Heroux-Devtek Inc. will focus on its landing gear division with the $300 million sale of about one-third of its business to a U.S. firm in a cash deal that sent the company's stock soaring on Tuesday.

Shares in Heroux-Devtek (TSX:HRX.TO - News) jumped 32 per cent, or $2.50, to $10.35 on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Earlier they traded as high as $11.75 and beat a record high of $10 per share set at the end of 2001.

Precision Castparts Corp. of Portland, Ore. (NYSE:PCP - News), will acquire Heroux-Devtek's Aerostructure and Industrial Products division, which had about $130 million of annual sales about one-third of its total revenue.

Chief executive Gilles Labbe said Heroux-Devtek will focus on growth and possible acquisitions in its landing gear business.

"Our vision is to continue to build Heroux-Devtek into a Quebec-based world-class organization in this core market," Labbe told analysts on a conference call to discuss the deal.

Heroux-Devtek is one of the Canadian companies that's involved in the Lockheed Martin F-35 jet fighter program, a multi-country initiative led by the United States, which has faced cost and timetable overruns.

"We are big players in the F-35," Labbe said of the radar-evading fighter jet.

"We design and build all of the outlook system for the F-35 in Canada and we also build some structural components in Canada, but of course our structure business will be sold. So all of the structure business we do on the F-35 will be taken over by Precision Castparts."

The Montreal-area company will remain significantly involved in the F-35 program through the landing-gear business that it's keeping, he said.

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Aerospace firm Heroux-Devtek sells chunk of business to focus on landing gear