DAE reports financial results for Q1

Dubai Aerospace Enterprise (DAE) Ltd. reported its financial results for the six months ended 30 June 2020. The consolidated financial statements can be found here.

Highlights included:

– Total Revenue: US$672.6 million (H1 2019: US$735.2 million)

– Net Income: US$121.7 million (H1 2019: US$197.1 million)

– Pre-Tax Profit Margin: 20% (H1 2019: 29%)

– Pre-Tax Return on Equity: 8.9% (H1 2019: 12.5%)

– Net Debt-to-Equity: 2.51x (Year-end 2019: 2.64x)

– Unsecured Debt as a percentage of Total Debt: 62% (Year-end 2019: 62%)

– Available Liquidity: US$2,818 million (Year-end 2019: US$2,404 million)

– Unencumbered Assets: US$6.5 billion (June 2019: US$6.1 billion)

– Fleet Utilization: 99.2% (June 2019: 99.3%)

Commenting on the financial results, Firoz Tarapore, Chief Executive Officer of DAE, said: “Our financial results for the first half of 2020 were characterized by excellent and abundant liquidity, strengthening balance sheet and lower reported profitability. The reported Net Income in H1 2020 was lower attributable primarily to 23 fewer aircraft in the Owned Aircraft portfolio, fewer asset sales resulting in lower gains on sale of assets, reduced finance income, and higher provisions for trade receivables offset by lower interest expense.

To date, we have provided meaningful rent deferral solutions that created value for both our clients and DAE. As of July 31, 2020, we have granted rent deferral requests from 34 airlines totaling aggregate rent of approximately 16% of annual reported revenue. We are currently evaluating rent deferral requests from an additional 24 airlines totaling aggregate rent of approximately 13% of annual reported revenue. We expect to provide additional assistance to our clients and we also expect arrears to climb.

As of June 30, 2020, we had US$2.8 billion of cash and available liquidity. During the first half of the year, we repurchased US$187 million of our bonds and have US$229 million of remaining repurchase authorization.

Fitch Ratings affirmed our investment grade unsecured debt rating in early July.”, Tarapore concluded.