BOC Aviation Limited (8BO.F) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the BOC Aviation results call for the year ended December 2021. I will now hand the session to Mr. Timothy Ross to begin today's presentation. Mr. Ross, please begin.

Thank you, Shylock, and welcome everybody to BOC Aviation's earnings call to discuss our final results for the year ended 31st of December, 2021. With me today are our Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Robert Martin; our Deputy Managing Director and Chief Financial Officer, Steven Townend; and our Deputy Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer, David Walton. Please note that some of the information you'll hear during our discussion today may consist of forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from statements made today. You should not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements, and you should review our results announcement for full details. Please also note that all currency references in today's call are in U.S. dollars. A copy of our earnings announcement is available both via the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and in the Investors' section of our website at www.bocaviation.com, and a conference call presentation is also available in the Investors section of our website. This call is being recorded and will be available for replay from our website within the next 24 hours as is a transcript of today's discussion. I'll now turn over the call to Robert Martin for his comments.

Thanks, Tim, and good evening to everyone on the line. Thank you for joining us for our 2021 full year earnings call. During this period, we surpassed $5.5 billion in cumulative earnings and celebrated our 5th year as a publicly listed company. We have now paid dividends of more than $1 billion to shareholders. We've reported a net profit after tax of $561 million for full year 2021, equivalent to earnings per share of $0.81. This was up 10% on 2020, while our second half 2021 earnings rising 64% compared with the same period in 2020. Net assets per share, meanwhile, also rose by 10% from the end of 2020 to $7.59. Our Board has recommended a final dividend of $0.1733 per share, payable to shareholders of record on 17th of June, up 48% on the final dividend paid for 2020. This takes the full year dividend for 2021 to $0.2831 per share and represents a payout ratio for the full year of 35% of net profit after tax, in line with the Board's distribution policy. Our total revenues and other income continued to rise, increasing 6% to more than $2.1 billion for the year. We ended 2021 with total assets at $24 billion. Operating cash flow net of interest expense, was stable at $1.3 billion for the full year. We finished the year with cash and undrawn committed liquidity of $6 billion and remain well supported by capital markets and the banking market. In 2021, we issued $1.5 billion in bonds and raised $2 billion in term loans. We continued to utilize the $3.5 billion revolving credit facility from Bank of China, with $90 million drawn as at the end of the year. Manufacturer delivery delays continued to impact our business in 2021. 29 aircraft were delayed that was scheduled for delivery in 2021, including 16 Boeing 787 aircraft. Late deliveries from this program will continue to remain an issue in 2022, with further delays anticipated. Now the path to recovery for the global aviation industry is now clearer as the effects of vaccinations, new treatments and herd immunity mitigate the harmful effects of the COVID pandemic. Regions such as Europe, the Americas and South and Southeast Asia are progressively opening their borders, and the traveling public is responding robustly by booking future travel. This pattern was observable when the U.S. opened its borders in November 2021 and when Australia began welcoming tourists again in February of this year. International bookings to the U.S. rose close to 50% following the announcement that it will reopen its borders to foreign visitors. Over 90 international flights landed on a single day in Australia by late February, up 61% from the previous year as borders were reopened following a 23-month closure. The airline industry has shown signs of recuperation, which commenced with strong cargo demand in 2020, expanded to include solid domestic passenger activity in 2021. And since the end of last year, international travel statistics have grown in all areas, except North Asia. The confidence that we detected amongst our customer airlines when we reported our interim results appears to have firmed. According to the International Air Transport Association's Airline Business Confidence Index for February 2022, 91% of airline CFOs surveyed expected better traffic over the next 12 months. Airframe manufacturers clearly share this optimism. Airbus is lifting production of the A320NEO family from 45 a month to 64 by the second quarter of 2023. Boeing 737 MAX family has now been recertified in 188 countries, with over 300 aircraft having been delivered to airline customers since December 2020. Boeing currently produces 27 of these a month and is targeting an increase to 47 by late 2023. We have seen a resurgence in aircraft orders placed with the 2 main manufacturers as well as a marked recovery in demand from investors for aircraft with lease attached. Funding markets remain receptive to aviation bond issuance. In the debt markets alone, airlines and aircraft lessors raised a total of USD 140 billion in 2021 compared with USD 117 billion in the previous year, according to Dealogic, as institutional debt capital replaced government funding as the largest source year-on-year. These were supplemented by a robust year for aircraft ABS debt offerings, which hit $8.4 billion, the second highest year ever and more than 4x 2020's issuance levels. As we emerge from the travel downturn, rising interest rates and inflation are macro concerns in the year ahead. In addition, the price of jet fuel has become very volatile since the beginning of the year, trading between $85 and over $150 a barrel for Singapore Jet Kerosene. We spent a lot of the last 2 years navigating around new government rules relating to health and travel restrictions, but those are now diminishing. Now we have a new challenge. Conflict between Russia and Ukraine has led to sanctions imposed by the governments of the U.S., U.K. and EU that will affect our ability to lease aircraft to Russian airlines. At the end of February, we had 18 aircraft representing a net book value of $935 million, equivalent to 4.8% of our owned fleet on lease with 4 Russian airlines, with no aircraft either leased or based in Ukraine, Belarus or Moldova. Rentals from our Russian customers were fully up to date as at the end of February. I'll now hand over the call to David to speak to our operations and business development. And then Steven will take over for a more detailed review of our P&L and balance sheet.

Thank you, Robert. We delivered 52 aircraft to airline customers during 2021, of which 7 were purchased by the customer at delivery, giving us 45 net new aircraft deliveries. Of these 45 deliveries, 16 were from our manufacturer order book and 29 were purchase and leasebacks with airlines. Our total fleet stood at 521 aircraft at the end of 2021, comprising 380 owned and 37 managed aircraft with an order book of 104 aircraft. Our 2021 deliveries were primarily narrow-body aircraft and were all latest technology aircraft, including: 31 A320NEO family aircraft and 18 737 MAX aircraft. In 2021, we delivered aircraft to a diverse group of customers, including Air China, United Airlines, Indigo, TUI, American Airlines and closer to home here in Singapore, Scoot, which is part of the Singapore Airlines Group. Investor demand for aircraft with leases attached was robust in 2021, and we sold 23 aircraft from the owned fleet during the year compared to 12 aircraft sold in 2020. The sales program in 2021 included 4 wide-body aircraft. We continue to build the CapEx pipeline as demonstrated by the recently signed purchase and lease transaction for 11 Boeing MAX 8 aircraft with Lynx Air of Canada. During 2021, we transitioned 9 used aircraft to airline customers, and our aircraft utilization rate for the year was strong at 98.5%. The weighted average age of our owned portfolio was 3.9 years at the end of December, once again, one of the youngest in the aircraft operating leasing industry. We also continue to have one of the industry's longest weighted average remaining lease term for our owned portfolio at 8.3 years at the end of 2021. As Robert mentioned, the past 2 weeks have seen a new challenge for the aircraft leasing industry as we address the impact of sanctions affecting aircraft lease transactions with airline customers in Russia. To put some context around this, at 28 February 2022, Russian airlines represented 4.8% of our owned aircraft portfolio comprising 18 aircraft which were a mix of 15 narrow-body passenger aircraft and 3 wide-body freighters, the strongest parts of the market. In addition to the owned portfolio, we presently have on managed narrow-body passenger aircraft on lease to a Russian customer. Sanctions will require that we recover our aircraft from Russian airlines and, as a consequence, we've been actively working on this. We will, of course, comply with sanctions and other laws applicable to us. The EU and U.K. sanctions set effectively a deadline of 28 March for termination of aircraft leases, which frankly is an unrealistic time table for a fleet of approximately 500 aircraft leased into Russia by operating lessors. Our operations in 2021 were 100% carbon neutral as we offset our direct emissions and at the same time, worked hard to reduce our energy usage, direct carbon emissions and waste, the areas where we've set hard targets for ourselves. We also improved our fleet by taking delivery onto our balance sheet of 45 new technology, highly fuel-efficient aircraft and selling 20 previous technology aircraft. Our owned fleet is now 66% latest technology by net book value of aircraft. We continue to have one of the sector's most gender diverse Boards, which features 3 female Board directors out of a total of 11 directors. We also have 3 different nationalities on our Board and 20 nationalities across our 5 offices globally. Cybersecurity was a top priority for us in 2021 with upgrades to our cyber threat prevention and detection capabilities, where we strengthened our hardware, our applications and our training. We also continued to contribute positively to our local communities, with teams from each of our 5 offices globally actively participating. We supported Airlink's aid to India and more recently, Airlink's aid to Tonga following the tsunami. We cleaned up coastal waterways in Singapore and Dublin. We helped beautify parks in New York, collected litter along the river Thames, and we tidied shared bike parks in Tianjin. Participation in the Orbis Virtual Race4Sight was another major pillar of our corporate social responsibility activities with half of our 186 employees taking part, logging almost 62,000 kilometers of running, biking or walking to raise money for the fight against avoidable blindness. And with that, I'll turn it over to Steven.

Thank you, David. As Robert outlined, we've reported a net profit after tax of $561 million for the full year 2021, equivalent to earnings of USD 0.81 per share, a 10% improvement on 2020. A 4.5% year-on-year rise in lease revenue reflected the growth in the average net book value of our fleet. Looking at our other sources of revenue. Interest and fee income amounted to $177 million, in line with 2020's level as we generated levels of fee income similar to last year from predelivery payment transactions and $97 million of other income was predominantly derived from recoveries following previously terminated leases, with most of this already recorded in our 2021 interim accounts. Gains on aircraft sales were $44 million, $41 million of which was generated in the second half of 2021 as demand returned to the aircraft trading market. This reflected the improved liquidity environment to which Robert previously referred. Turning now to our 2 largest expenses, which together account for 88% of the total. Depreciation, our largest expense item, increased by 13% relative to 2020. Finance expenses, our second largest item, increased by only 2% to $465 million, reflecting lower interest rates. The combined effect of all of this was a reduction in our net lease yield from 7.9% in 2020 to 7.6% in 2021. For the full year, we recorded a $146 million asset impairment. This is effectively accelerated depreciation, related to the carrying value of 32 aircraft. 94% of that dollar number related to wide-body aircraft. This compared with aircraft impairment of $109 million in 2020. Partially offsetting this, we were able to write back $8 million of impairment losses on financial assets as collections improved to 96.6% from 94% last year, and some leases were restructured. This compared with a charge for impairment on financial assets of $43 million in 2020. We had capital expenditure of over $2 billion in 2021, primarily related to our aircraft deliveries and predelivery payments. This fell short of the $4 billion target that we have set ourselves, primarily, as Robert mentioned, because of the manufacturer delays in delivering our aircraft. We have over $5 billion in committed CapEx between now and December 24, and we'll add to that as we continue to invest in our fleet. Our debt level was unchanged compared to end 2020, and our average cost of funds for 2021 improved to 2.9% per annum from 3.2% in 2020. We previously noted that S&P Global Ratings and Fitch Ratings affirmed our A- credit ratings, with S&P lifting our outlook from negative to stable in April 2021. We raised $1.5 billion in the debt capital markets with a further $2 billion raised from banks. Our indebtedness was flat at $16.8 billion compared with end 2020, while our gross debt to equity fell 3.2 to 1 from 3.5 to 1 at the end of the previous year. Funds raised from external sources, together with robust internally generated cash flows saw us repay almost $2 billion in debt maturities, with a further $1.9 billion scheduled for repayment in 2022. These obligations and our target CapEx can be funded from our cash flow and our committed liquidity of $6 billion. Finally, our tax rate increased to 12.1% in 2021, up from 9.4% in 2020. This was predominantly due to more assets being booked in our U.S. subsidiary, plus the future increase in U.K. tax from 2023 that was enacted in June. Now I'll pass back to Robert for his final comments.

Our thanks go out once more to our colleagues, our directors and our stakeholders who contributed to resilient results in another challenging year. We appreciate your focus and tenacity as the market now rebounds from the worst downturn in aviation history. We are optimistic about the potential for traffic growth in 2022 in most parts of the world, as well as rising demand for the aircraft that support it as more countries treat COVID as endemic and border restrictions are lowered. The release of pent-up desire for international travel should be material in the year ahead, and we anticipate this becoming visible in our customers' cash flows and demand for leased aircraft. With our balance sheet strength and strong liquidity, we are well positioned for the upturn that has commenced. This concludes our review of the industry, our company's financials and our outlook, and I'll pass the call back to Tim.

Thanks, Robert. This wraps up management's formal commentary. We've now time for Q&A [Operator Instructions]. I'll hand the call back now to the operator who will run the Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is Parash Jain from HSBC.

I'm Parash Jain from HSBC Hong Kong. And my question would be still around the aircraft which are stuck in Russia. I mean, how easy or challenging you think will it be to bring those aircraft out of Russia given this stipulated time? And given that 500-odd aircraft need to be redeployed if all of them have been pulled out from Russia, what kind of pressure do you think it would have on the yield for the industry and probably for BOC, in particular, going into 2022?

Thanks, Parash. It's Robert. Clearly, this is a new area that we haven't seen, I would say until in the post-2001 environment. The good news is we have a management team who have been through that, and we know what to do. And bear in mind, we've repossessed in the past 58 aircraft from 18 jurisdictions. We are working very closely with our customers in Russia to move those aircraft out, and that is something that will take time. Clearly, you can't redeliver 500 aircraft in such a short time. And so we are very focused on that, and we'll update people as we have news on that.

Next question is from Ian Wong of UBS.

Congratulation on excellent set of results. Just a follow-up question on that. So should we expect any receivables impairment or asset impairment that were likely to come from the Russia fleet provided that can't be collected by the end of this year. Is there any risk? If there is, what should we be thinking about in terms of the revenue exposure? I know you mentioned about 4.8% of the fleet at Russian Airlines but in terms of the revenue exposure, is it similar?

Okay. So firstly, we have to be very careful making forward-looking statements. Bear in mind, we are a listed company, but that's taken in. So when we look at our fleet, yes, 4.8% is the percentage of our net book value. As I mentioned in the presentation, the net book value as of today is $935 million but obviously, that will depreciate each month as we go through this year by roughly $3 million a month, just to give you a feeling of banking. In terms of our revenue exposure, it's roughly the same percentage. .

Next is [ Zou Dian ] from Daiwa Capital.

This is Kevin from Daiwa. So I want to ask about, can you give us some maybe outlook for the coming net lease yield -- that is should be -- this year should be continued on a downward trend? Or what do you see?

Right. Can you just repeat the first bit of the question. You went quite, when you said the first time.

The net lease yield, because -- the...

Net lease yield.

Yes, the current [ goal for ] for this year.

Okay. So absent the events of the last 2 weeks, we were reasonably confident on having bottomed out on that. I think in the short term, we can expect some effect in the first half of this year. And so in the first half this year, it may drift further downwards. The good news is that we have a very solid base of long-term debt. And so the cost of debt is well enmeshed in our portfolio, and so it won't come from that side. Depreciation is predictable, we know what the depreciation is. And so then it's just the amount of debt -- sorry, the amount of rental. And to give you a feeling of magnitude, it's roughly about $9 million a month.

[Operator Instructions]

Okay, well operator, if there's no more questions. We thank everyone for joining the call. If people realize they've got follow-up questions, feel free to follow up directly with Tim or Kelly and we're happy to come back to you individually. So thanks, everyone, for your time.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.