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

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to BOC Aviation Limited's 2023 Final Results Conference Call. I will now hand the session to Mr. Timothy Ross to begin today's presentation. Mr. Ross, please begin.

Thanks, Ray, and welcome, everybody, to BOC Aviation's earnings call to discuss our final results for the year ended 31st of December 2023. With me today, are our Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Steven Talent; our Chief Operating Officer, Tom Chandler; and our Chief Financial Officer, Wu Jianguang. Please note that some of the information you'll hear today during our discussion may consist of forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from the statements made today. You should not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements, and you should review our results announcements 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 bocaviation.com, and the 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 Steven Townend for his comments.

Thanks, Tim, and good evening to everyone on the call. Thank you for joining us for our 2023 final results earnings call, where growth in our aircraft leasing business and recoveries related to aircraft in Russia have combined to produce a record result. We are delighted to report net profit after tax of $764 million for 2023, equivalent to earnings per share of $1.10. This compared with net profit after tax of $20 million in 2022, reflecting the Russia-related write-downs incurred that year. Adjusted for impairments and recoveries related to Russia, core net profit after tax rose to $547 million from $527 million in 2022, while net assets per share at end 2023 had risen 11% to $8.28. Our Board has recommended a final dividend of $0.2721 per share, payable to shareholders of record on 7th of June, taking the total dividend paid for the year to $0.3852 per share, an increase of 45% on the total dividend paid for 2022. This is consistent with our policy of distributing 35% of net profit after tax for the full year. As a reminder, last year's dividend was based on core net profit after tax rather than the statutory number. Our total revenues and other income rose 7% to $2.5 billion for 2023, which we ended with total assets at $24.2 billion as we increased our investment in new aircraft. For a second year, our collection rate remained over 100%, reflecting the continued receipt of airline customer payments deferred from previous periods, and this helped to lift our operating cash flow net of interest to a full year record of $1.6 billion. We finished the year with cash and undrawn committed liquidity of $5.6 billion. For the year ended December 2023, IATA expects global airline profitability to hit $23 billion. This will have been achieved on sustained growth in passenger demand, which has expanded faster than capacity and has enabled airlines to maintain fares at current levels. Passenger demand rose 37% for full year 2023 and passenger load factor of above 82% matched 2019 utilization levels. While all markets recorded double-digit demand growth, the strongest was recorded in our home markets of Asia Pacific. Passenger traffic rose by over 96% in 2023 as the region's carriers restored long-haul services and the Chinese market continued to recover. We see Asia Pacific again at the forefront of growth in 2024. Chinese international passenger capacity has now returned close to 70% of 2019 levels, and total market demand during the recent Lunar New Year exceeded the number of passengers flying in 2019 by 18%. India's continued growth should also provide further impetus. The Asia Pacific region will continue to provide plenty of both placement and financing opportunities for well-capitalized lessors, such as ourselves, especially those with substantial order books. Capacity growth remains a challenge for us and our airline customers and is constraining the growth opportunities of airlines and lessors alike. This has been a multiyear problem. And today, obstacles including supply chain, lack of experience, labor and engine availability continue to dampen rates of aircraft production. The effects of this supply side shortage have been intensified competition for aircraft, rising lease rates and improving valuations for both new and used aircraft. All of our 2024 lease maturities are placed or subject to sale agreements, while all of our 2024 order book deliveries have been placed at attractive rates against this backdrop. We expect to see demand for leasing remains strong over the next 12 months as airline financing requirements for new aircraft deliveries exceed $100 billion, approaching 2018's record level. Funding markets, however, have not returned fully for the airline industry, which should continue to positively affect the volume of new deliveries financed by lessors. Since we last spoke in August, the macroeconomic environment has stabilized. Singapore jet fuel has averaged $107 per barrel for the last 3 months, down 9% on the same period last year, while the value of the U.S. dollar against the basket of currencies is unchanged compared to this time last year. Long-term interest rates, while down from their fourth quarter 2023 peaks remain higher than they were this time last year, with 5-year treasuries averaging 30 points higher so far in 2024. We have been successfully passing these increases on to our customers, as Tom will discuss shortly. Insurance settlements in respect of 11 aircraft in Russia contributed $217 million in net profit after tax to 2023's total, a partial recovery of the $507 million post-tax write-down for 17 aircraft that we recorded in 2022. We are encouraged by this and continue to pursue all possible avenues for further recovery. However, we are unable to provide guidance on what form this may take, when it might occur or the value of any future settlements. During our first half review in August, we welcomed Tom as our new COO; and Liu Jin as our Chairman. Towards the end of the year, we announced the retirement of our long-standing Managing Director and CEO, Robert Martin. We also announced the promotion of Wu Jianguang to Chief Financial Officer as my replacement. Our thanks go to Robert for his 25 years of leadership as we built a business that has earned cumulative net profit after tax of over $6 billion. I'll now hand the call over to Tom to speak to our operations and business development, and then Jianguang will present a more detailed review of our P&L and balance sheet.

Thank you, Steven. Our operational and business development report is as follows. We delivered 67 aircraft to 11 different airline customers, of which 2 were purchased by the customer at delivery, giving us 65 net new aircraft deliveries for the year, the highest since 2017. We also signed a record number of lease commitments for 142 aircraft. As at end December, our total fleet stood at 684 aircraft, comprising 426 owned, 34 managed and an order book of 224, representing committed CapEx of $12 billion. Our order book continued to grow, with 95 aircraft added during 2023. This strong pipeline underpins our future growth and comprises the most popular new technology aircraft types, predominantly Airbus A320neo family and Boeing 737-8. Our committed deliveries give us an excellent base load of CapEx each year and our valuable positions given the supply issues that the industry faces and the high demand environment described earlier by Steven. Our new deliveries during the year were primarily narrow-body aircraft, although we also added another 4 Boeing 787 deliveries to our balance sheet. All of our new deliveries were fuel-efficient, latest technology aircraft and included 18 A220 as well as 10 737 and 33 A320neo family aircraft. We continue to see the impact of manufacturer delivery delays, with 5 aircraft that were scheduled for delivery in 2023 being delayed into 2024. Of the deliveries that did occur in 2023, a significant number occurred in the fourth quarter, delaying our revenue. We believe that supply chain and labor issues will continue to impact our OEM partners as they endeavor to increase production rates, but the delays will stabilize once the planned production rate increases are achieved. To offset the effective delays, we've made considerable progress in sourcing replacement CapEx, and have increased committed deliveries for 2024 to 58 from the 39 that we guided towards when we last reported in August. Adding new positions to our delivery skyline has been a key focus, and of the 95 aircraft added, we delivered 48 of these in 2023, with the balance scheduled for delivery before the end of 2025. During the year, we transitioned 13 used owned and managed aircraft to airline customers, with only 1 freighter aircraft and 3 owned single-aisle aircraft off-lease at the end of the period, 2 of which are already committed for onward lease. This compares with 7 aircraft at the same point last year and reflects the robust demand that currently exists for the young aircraft, of which our fleet comprises. The weighted average age of our owned portfolio was 4.6 years at the end of December, remaining 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 terms for our owned portfolio at 8.1 years. 77% of our fleet is latest technology, as is 100% of our order book. The average appraised value of our aircraft lease fleet was $20.6 billion, representing an 8% premium to the fleet's net book value of $19.1 billion. We sold 20 aircraft from the owned fleet in 2023, improving on 2022 levels and achieving our targets. Firmer aircraft values meant gain on sale margin improved to 10.6% from 5.1% in 2022. Lease rate factor increased to 10% from 9.2%, reflecting the effects of improved lease pricing and interest rate adjustment mechanisms in our leases. Net lease yield rose to 7.1% from 7% in 2022. This was slower than the improvement in lease rate factor, primarily explained by the higher cost of funds recorded during the period and the delivery of 10 operating leased aircraft in Q4 2023. In terms of funding, we raised $4.1 billion in new financing, comprising $1.7 billion from the debt capital markets across a range of tenors, with a further $2.5 billion drawn from facilities with our banking group of over 50 banks. Cash flow generated from our financing and operating activities allowed us to fund our CapEx and repay $2.4 billion in maturing bonds and loans. We have $3.1 billion in debt obligations scheduled repayment in 2024, which, together with our anticipated CapEx, can be funded from our cash flow and our committed liquidity of $5.6 billion. Having set ourselves new 3-year ESG targets at the end of 2022 as part of our Hong Kong Stock Exchange listing requirements, we are on track to meet or exceed these. In recognition of our continuous efforts to improve our ESG performance, MSCI lifted our rating from BBB to A towards the end of the year. Our commitment to robust governance and diversity at Board and management level remains unchanged, with 3 of our Board Directors and 26% of management being female. During 2023, we lifted the number of community-focused events for which our colleagues volunteered, completing 18 events as compared with 15 in 2022, split evenly between the first and second halves. In Singapore, we increased the frequency of our volunteering with Food From the Heart, continued cleaning our rivers with Waterways Watch and maintained wheelchairs for The Red Cross. Elsewhere, our Tianjin and New York offices participated in coat donation programs, and the London and Dublin offices jointly volunteered with Save the Children. That concludes the overview of our operations and business development performance for 2023. And with that, I'll now turn it to Jianguang for a deeper review of our financial performance.

Thank you, Tom. As Steven mentioned earlier, we reported a net profit after tax of $764 million for 2023, equivalent to earnings of $1.10 per share and the best profit reported in our history. Total revenue was $2.5 billion and continues to be well diversified. This represented a 7% increase on 2022. When Russia-related revenue is included in both years, lease rental income rose 7% to $1.9 billion. As we grew the fleet and as our lease rent factor improved, financial lease revenue increased markedly up 69% to $69 million, reflecting the almost fourfold increase in financial lease receivables to $2.5 billion. Our gains on aircraft sales of $78 million were ahead by 22% on 2022 as we delivered on our sales target of 20 aircraft sold in 2023. Other income rose over 220% to $317 million, primarily due to receipt of Russian insurance settlements totaling $258 million. Interest and fee income was down $10 million to $86 million in 2023 because of lower contributions from predelivery payment financing. From cost perspective, our 2 largest expense continued to account for 90% of the total. Depreciation, which remains our largest expense, was largely flat at $795 million compared to 2022 million, reflecting the sales activities and the pace of aircraft deliveries that occurred towards the end of the year. Finance expenses, our second largest item, rose by 32% to $636 million. This was mainly due to a high cost of debt of 4.1% per annum in 2023 compared with 3.1% previous year and an extra $1.4 billion in gross debt as at December 2023. Excluding Russian effects, impairment of aircraft declined to $9 million compared to last year's $65 million. Looking at the balance sheet, we ended the year with total assets of $24.2 billion, funded by debt of $16.5 billion. Total equity increased to $5.7 billion compared with $5.2 billion at the end of 2022. This was mainly attributable to profit for the period and partially offset by the payment of dividends, amounting to $201 million. Loans and borrowings increased to $16.5 million as we funded our fleet growth with gross debt to equity stable at 2.9x, unchanged from December last year. Rating agencies, S&P and Fitch, both reaffirm our A- credit rating and a stable outlook during 2023. Finally, our effective tax rate was little changed at 11.2% in 2023 compared with the 2022's rate of 11.8%, excluding effects of Russia. I will now hand the call back to Steve for his closing remarks.

Thanks, engine. To close, we remain grateful to our Board, our staff, investors and our other stakeholders for their ongoing support over the past year as earnings and balance sheet growth have regained momentum. Our airline customers' financial health continues to improve on the back of strong travel demand and despite a limited supply of aircraft. This supports an environment of greater aircraft utilization and higher lease rates, allowing our business to further improve its profitability. Our increased distributions for 2023 are testament to our level of confidence in the outlook. I'm positive about 2024. The year has started strongly as we continue to see opportunities for our financing products, deliver aircraft from our order book and evaluate further growth opportunities. Funding markets remain supportive and falling interest rates later in 2024 should ease pressures on our leasing margins. With that, I conclude our review of the industry, our company's financials and our outlook, and I'll pass the call back to Tim.

Thanks, Steven. This wraps up management's formal content. We now have time for Q&A. [Operator Instructions] I'll hand the call back now to the operator for the Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Parash from HSBC.

Can you hear me?

Yes, Parash. It's Steven. Yes, we can hear you.

And I just wanted to ask in interest of one question. I think market was pleasantly surprised with the resolution coming with respect to your and your peers' fleet with Russia, with probably a part of that payment is received. How should we think about going into 2024, 2025? Are you hopeful of claiming most of it? Or it's probably very difficult to say and we will know when we will know? Any color on that?

I think you probably mostly summed it up there, Parash, by "It's very difficult to say and we will know when we will know." I think we have made good progress and we continue to follow a number of different avenues, as you are aware. We continue to talk to the airline customers about possibly getting aircraft back. We continue to talk to the insurers in Russia about possible settlements there. We continue to talk to our own insurers. And as you're aware, we will be in court with them if nothing changes later this year, along with all other major lessors. But for each of those, at the moment, we don't have a definitive outcome. And so as soon as we have something, obviously, we will let you know.

Okay. Perfect. And maybe very one quickly, sorry, Tim. With respect to order book, how is your interaction with Boeing and Airbus, and how confident you are that they will be able to deliver as promised and that will meet your CapEx requirement?

So maybe if I talk about what I expect for CapEx for this year and then maybe Tom can talk a little bit about, more specifically, what we're seeing from the manufacturers. I think in terms of our CapEx for the year, what we've shown already is that we've got about $2.5 billion of CapEx already committed. When we've talked in previous years, we've talked about what a typical year would look like in terms of about $4 billion of CapEx. We got much closer to that last year than we have in recent years. And I would hope again that that's certainly our target for the year and we hope to be able to add the additional commitments on top of what we already have to hit that. But clearly, there's challenges with both Boeing and Airbus. And so maybe, Tom, do you want to touch on that briefly?

Yes. And with both OEMs, we have seen some incremental delays coming through as they have had the difficulty in different aspects of the supply chain in terms of meeting the increased production. Obviously, with the recent activity with Boeing, with the freeze in the production levels and, as I've said publicly, not currently meeting the frozen maximum level, then we are expecting some further impact from that. As naturally, if they are unable to increase production, then the targets they had will move out and that would naturally move aircraft out. So we continue to stay very closely engaged with both OEMs to track the developments and adapt accordingly.

You next question is from Kelvin Lau from Daiwa.

Can you hear me? Can you hear me?

Yes, Kelvin. Go ahead.

Okay. So I just got one question regarding the net lease yield trend. So I see actually 2023, we see some slight improvement. So what should we expect for this year? Would it be depending on the U.S. interest rates or not? Or in case of U.S. interest rate, the reduction will be -- the cut will be -- if that will be delayed, will there be any impact from us? So I want you to have more color on the net lease yield in the coming -- maybe this year or even next, if possible.

Okay. So I think the way to think about it, Kelvin, is it's the 3 key things that affect it. The -- firstly, obviously, as you already underlined, is what happens on interest rates because clearly the cost of financing is a key part of that. And as I said in my comments, I think we expect that we'll start to see dollar interest rates reduce in the second half of the year. And so that should give us some positive tailwind in that respect. The other 2 elements that factor into it are also aircraft deliveries, because clearly the deliveries that we are now taking, a, are in a better market than the ones that we were taking delivery of maybe 2 or 3 years ago, but also they are adjusting for current interest rate levels and so that feeds through and starts to help. And so the more aircraft we can add at these accretive rates, the better that becomes. The third element also that you need to watch is our aircraft sales because, obviously, a big part of our sales program now that we're in a much stronger market is moving some of the lower-yielding assets out of the portfolio. And so it's the combination of all those 3 working together that should start to have some effect as we move through this year.

But also on the net lease yield, should we -- because in 2021, we have like 7.6%, relatively high. So what -- how long do you expect that we can return to this level? Or actually, we are entering a kind of a new normal that probably may be hovering around 7%, 7.3%, 7.2%, something like that.

No, I think that as we see the combination of those 3 things happening that we talked about, we should be able to get back up to those levels. The question is how long it takes. And that I guess is driven by, as Tom talked about, delays in deliveries don't help in that respect. And it will also depend on when we start to see that movement in interest rates. But I think once we see all of those things come together, we should be able to get back up to those levels.

Our next question is from [ Amy Chang ] from Citi.

I just wanted to follow up on lease yield trend. You mentioned that the third factor would be aircraft sales, and we noted that in the year 2023 actually this to lower cost compared to the previous year. Wondering if you have any guidance for disposals for the year of 2024 and all...

So I guess the way to think about aircraft sales is perhaps less in terms of number of aircraft and more in terms of dollar amounts. The dollar value of aircraft that we sold last year was between $800 million and $900 million. Generally, what we guide for is somewhere between -- from $1 billion to $1.5 billion of sales. And when we're in a stronger market, which I think we are now, you'll probably see more towards the top end of that. And so again, we should start to see that feeding through into the net lease yield.

And also, I wanted to follow up on deliveries, because we see that Boeing is actually faced with some safety issues. And you also mentioned earlier that there's already 5 aircraft deliveries that has been delayed into the year of 2024. I'm wondering how much further would these Boeing issues cause delays in deliveries?

So the honest answer right now is we won't know until the end of the year because as we saw all the way through 2022 and 2023, these things keep evolving. I would imagine that we will still, come the end of this year, see some further deliveries that will slip into next year. I think there's an inevitability around that. But we will have to replace that with the aircraft that we financed during the year as well on the other side. Because if you remember, our business is both about what we've already locked in for the longer term, and then the shorter-term financing that we do for airlines' aircraft deliveries. And so I still think in terms of our guidance for overall CapEx for the year, we're still focused on that $4 billion number.

Our next question is from Deepak from HSBC.

Are you able to hear me? Hello?

Yes, we can hear you, Deepak.

Okay. Great. So my question was on the CapEx outlook of $4 billion. You have $2.5 billion already committed. So how does this tie with the PLB transactions? Like last year seems to be a record year for PLB transactions, which is in leaseback, so if you could probably provide some color on what to expect going forward. Will this kind of remain a new stream which you will actively look, not just during periods of low liquidity, but even as a business proposition when aircraft deliveries are delayed?

Yes. So I think you need to look at a couple of different things here, Deepak. So firstly, I think although we are still seeing delays, we actually anticipate that the total value of aircraft deliveries this year across the industry will be about $100 billion, which is up on last year and will be up at levels that we haven't seen since 2018. And so I think that does create opportunity because the airlines need to finance those deliveries. And if you look forward beyond 2024, even with the delays we're seeing, if we look out 2, 3, 4 years, that goes up from about $100 billion up to about $150 billion. And so that demand for financing does create opportunity. Now the way that we look at that market, we essentially have 2 products that we use fundamentally. We have the operating leaseback and we also have our finance lease product. And we are using both of those in different parts of the world. And particularly at the moment, what we've seen is that, that demand for financing is going up. But the capital markets still haven't returned, certainly to the airline industry, in the way that we saw in the last decade. And so there's still, I think, a shortfall. And that's where the role, if you like, of the well-capitalized investment-grade lessors like ourselves can continue to play a role for the industry and continue to grow our businesses. Fundamentally, the airline industry is not an investment-grade industry, and that's where we do play that role because the financing markets have come back very strongly for all the major lessors, much more so than they have for the airlines.

Our next question is from Mindy Gao from CLSA.

Can you hear me okay?

Yes, we can hear you, Mindy.

I have a question regarding the global minimum tax. And I wonder, do you see any impact regarding this on the company? Or do you expect the tax rate to increase like in the next couple of years?

Yes. So this is -- I guess, it's something that we're seeing unfold in both last year and this year and will continue for some time. So clearly, it will have an effect. If I look at where we own and book aircraft at the moment, both the U.K. and Ireland have now implemented global minimum tax. It won't make a fundamental difference in the U.K. because the tax rate was already above 15%. In Ireland, it will, but it's marginal because we were paying 12.5% and we'll move up to 15% on the revenues that we generate through our Irish vehicle. Where we may see larger change going forward will be in Singapore. Singapore has announced in its budget that it will bring in global minimum tax from next year. But there's still a lot of detail around it, particularly around the refundable investment credits that we don't have. And so I would imagine that by the time we talked to you about our half year results later this year, we'll have a better sense of what effect that might have on the Singapore side.

There are currently no questions in queue. [Operator Instructions] Our next question is from Jason Sum from DBS.

Sorry, can you hear me?

Yes, Jason, go ahead.

Just 2 quick questions from me. So earlier, you mentioned that the funding market for airlines is still not quite conducive as compared to pre-COVID. So I just wanted to get a sense, because you guys typically track the spread between your cost of funding versus the airline cost of funding. So how have you seen this spread sort of evolved over maybe the past few months or even the past year? And maybe a quick follow-up question is I noticed that your exposure to China and Europe has fallen. You've increased your exposure to America. So wanted to get a sense of whether it is simply a function of just better opportunities in the Americas that you guys are capitalizing on? Or is there any other reasons that are driving this change in your exposure?

Okay. So I think firstly, in terms of cost of funds, obviously, that varies from one airline to another and from one region to another. But if I look at where our bonds currently trade, we're trading at a spread of probably about roughly 100 basis points over treasuries. The -- if you take your average airline, which is not an investment-grade airline, then you're probably looking at 200 to 300 basis points wider in terms of where they can fund, and that's what creates the opportunity. Clearly, there's a small number of airlines that are investment-grade and therefore the gap is much, much narrower. But that's not where we generate the fundamental part of that business. With those airlines, it tends to be much more placing our own aircraft. In terms of the geographic spread, so it's really been a consequence of what we've seen happening on a global basis. Obviously, 2020, for all markets, airline traffic was down dramatically. But then what we started to see as we move through 2021 and into 2022 was that markets recovered much faster in the Americas than they did anywhere else. And then that has gradually starts to spread through Europe and the Middle East, and now we're starting to see that coming through Asia as well. And so what you've seen as a consequence over that period has been that the Americas' proportion of our portfolio has grown because that was where the demand for aircraft was, both demand for our aircraft and demand for financing their own deliveries. What you're now starting to see, and you've seen it in the last -- really the last 7 days here in Southeast Asia, you've seen Changi Airport declare that its traffic is now back up above 2019 levels. You saw Cathay Pacific yesterday announced really good results. And so I think as that now starts to happen and we see that recovery in cross-border traffic around Asia, then we will see that same balance return to our portfolio that we had previously.

Operator, thank you very much. I think we'll end the call here. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for your attendance. If you have any follow-up questions, please don't hesitate to contact me [email protected], and I'll come back to you directly. Thank you, everyone, for joining and we look forward to speaking to you again with our interims in August, if not before. Thank you.

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