The Dubai aircraft lessor’s fleet size increased to about 425 planes during the year. Dubai Aerospace Enterprise, the Middle East’s largest plane lessor, told its aircraft leasing company signed 200 lease deals, extensions, and amendments in 2021, as the aviation industry started to gradually recover from the Covid-19 pandemic.
Dubai Aerospace Enterprise
DAE Capital, the company’s aircraft leasing company, also received 41 aircraft and sold 30 aircraft during the year, DAE told in its annual business transactions update on Wednesday. In addition, it signed four latest servicing deals covering seven aircraft.
The company’s fleet of owned, operated, committed and mandated-to-manage aircraft came about 425 planes during 2021 when it served 112 customers in 54 countries, it told. The average age of its owned fleet reached 6.7 years, it told.
Pandemic’s effects on the aviation industry
- While the pandemic’s effects on the aviation industry will restart for a long time, the recovery is underway and aircraft lessors are well placed to prosper even in this “dislocated environment”, according to a statement by KPMG in December.
“While the challenges stemming from new variants of concern are significant, there have been clear positive trends with the introduction of the EU vaccine passport and the reopening of transatlantic travel. The question is when not if, we will see a complete recovery,” toldJoe O’Mara, head of aviation finance and tax partner at KPMG.
DAE issued $2.5 billion in new unsecured notes during 2021, with a weighted average coupon of 2.31 percent. It also redeemed about $2.2bn in total unsecured notes with a weighted average coupon of 5.07 percent last year, the company told.
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profit for the period fell to $90.5 million in the first nine months of 2021, from $167.3m in the same period in 2020, DAE expressed in November. Adjusted profit for the time stood at $128.8m after adding back one-off debt redemption prices.
Total income for the first nine months dropped to $925.3m, from $984.1m in the same time in 2020, as net lease income fell 8.7 percent year-on-year.
Aviation industry
The company is well-positioned to manage the effects of Covid-19 thanks to its strong balance sheet, it expressed. The aviation industry has benefited from a robust sale-and-leaseback market during the year, according to KPMG.
“Since the start of the pandemic, we have seen airlines enter into billions of dollars worth of sale and leaseback transactions with lessors. Some of these transactions were airlines seeking liquidity by selling their existing owned aircraft to lessors and leasing them back from the lessor,” told Killian Croke, who leads KPMG’s aviation audit team.
“More frequently, lessors were stepping in to complete the orders that airlines had placed with Boeing or Airbus and entered into a lease of that latest aircraft with that same airline. This sale and leaseback market has restarted to prosper throughout 2021,” he told.
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