AerCap Holdings N.V.

Good day, and welcome to the AirCap Holdings NV first quarter 2023 financial results. Today's conference is being recorded, and a transcript will be available following the call on the company's website. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Joseph McGinley, head of investor relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator, and hello, everyone. Welcome to our first quarter 2023 conference call. With me today is our Chief Executive Officer, Angus Kelly, and our Chief Financial Officer, Pete Juhasz. Before we begin today's call, I would like to remind you that some statements made during this conference call, which are not historical facts, may be forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. RCAP undertakes no obligation other than that imposed by law to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect future events, information, or circumstances that arise after this call. Further information concerning issues that could materially affect performance can be found in AirCap's earnings release dated May 2, 2023. A copy of our earnings release and conference call presentation are available on our website at aircap.com. This call is open to the public and is being webcast simultaneously at aircap.com and will be archived for replay. We will shortly run through our earnings presentation and will allow time at the end for Q&A. As a reminder, I would ask that analysts limit themselves to one question and one follow-up. I will now turn the call over to Angus Kelly.

Thank you for joining us for our first quarter 2023 earnings call.

I am pleased to report another quarter of strong earnings for AirCap, generating adjusted net income of $566 million and adjusted earnings per share of $2.34. This reflects the continued normalization of air travel demand after the events of the past few years and a return to business as usual for AirCap and our airline customers. I am also pleased to affirm our 2023 adjusted EPS guidance at the higher end of our previously announced range. Cash generation was extremely robust in the quarter, with operating cash flows of $1.4 billion on strong collections and higher utilization of our assets. As a result of these excellent earnings and cash flows, I am pleased to announce a new $500 million share repurchase program. It is clear that the tone of the airline industry continues to be positive, and unlike prior years, This is now reflected in all major regions of the world. Demand is robust, and many airlines are reporting record performance metrics across bookings, sales, operating cash flow, and revenues. From discussions with airlines recently, their main concern is around securing enough capacity to address the growing demand they see coming their way over the next several years. In the U.S., we are seeing announcements from the TSA on record numbers of passengers as airlines reopen routes and increase frequencies to Asia in particular. European carriers continue to surpass expectations despite the geopolitical uncertainty and higher rate environment. And in Asia, where the return to pre-pandemic levels of capacity was not possible last year, airlines are quickly accelerating towards and through these levels with the reopening of China. So from the conversations I have had with our customers since our last earnings call, confidence around future aircraft demand for the coming years continues to rise. I've spoken many times about the resilience of Aircap's business model, which has been enhanced by the greater scale, diversification, and track record we have built up as a company. Of course, there will always be events around the world that create headlines, many of which have no impact on our business. From where we stand today, I am extremely pleased with the consistent levels of outstanding execution and customer focus that sets AirCap apart. This focus on execution was reflected in the significant level of activity in the first quarter, during which AirCap closed 252 transactions, comprising 155 lease agreements, 56 purchases, and 41 sales. This is an unparalleled level of activity in our industry. On the sales side, we continue to see strong and broad-based demand for our assets, closing $639 million of transactions in the first quarter at an 18% gain on sale margin. This is a facet of our business that has provided consistent returns for our shareholders over many years. So I'd like to spend some time talking you through what we're seeing here today. At the outset, it's important to understand that there are generally only three reasons why we sell aircraft. The first is to reduce exposure to certain aircraft types. The second is to diversify airline credit. And the third is where the reinvestment returns from a sale are higher than holding onto the asset. We never sell an asset just to make a gain. as doing so would erode the long-term quality of the platform. Put simply, the gains look after themselves if you have the patience and knowledge to buy at the right time and the discipline to sell at the right price. AirCap consistently sells assets at a gain to a wide range of buyers, including financial investors, airlines, part-head specialists, and other leasing companies. In the last four years alone, we have sold almost 400 owned aircraft, engines, and helicopters, underlining the attractiveness of our fleet through various global shocks and events. Fundamentally, selling an aircraft is the best confirmation a management team can have for how they run the business, as it validates your depreciation policies, acquisition values, and fleet strategy. Likewise, third-party purchases are the best validation a shareholder can have around the true value of a company's assets. As I mentioned, we have a wide range of potential buyers for aircraft, and as the chart on the right-hand side shows, their participation varies over time. In particular, airlines have stepped up significantly as buyers in the last 18 months. We are seeing more frequent requests from airlines to purchase older aircraft and engines to ensure they have the capacity to meet the long-term demand they see for air travel. This supports our view that airlines simply do not believe the production rates announced by the OEMs and are planning accordingly. Furthermore, I expect that when the ABS market for aircraft reopens, we will see further demand from financial investors and other aircraft buyers. So how does this inform our strategy? Of course, every company talks about buying their aircraft well, and many also feel that their book values are undervalued. But no one has anywhere near the level of external sales validation that AirCap has demonstrated over the course of the last 17 years. having sold over 1,000 assets. Given this dynamic, it is incumbent on us to take advantage of these opportunities. For example, if we can continue to sell aircraft at strong gains on sale and subsequently use the freed up capital from these sales to repurchase our shares at a discount of fair value, we will continue to create significant value for our shareholders. For example, last year, we sold $2.2 billion of assets with an average age of 17 years. Selling these assets freed up a total of $755 million, comprised of $526 million of book equity and $229 million of gain and sale for a 1.4 times book equity multiple. We then redeployed $500 million of that excess capital into share repurchases during March at $56.89 per share, generating $88 million of additional value. This arises from purchasing $588 million of book equity for $500 million, i.e. a 15% discount. So from the starting $526 million of book value of equity associated with those assets sold in 2022, we have managed to create $317 million of additional value for our shareholders, a 60% uplift. We expect to generate further shareholder value from today's authorization, which will increase these returns. So in summary, this was another great quarter for AirCap, with broad-based demand for our products, generating strong earnings and cash flows throughout the business. We continue to execute numerous transactions every day as our customers position themselves for continued growth in demand. Our confidence in the future remains strong, and we look forward to demonstrating this to you in the quarters and years to come. With that, I will hand the call over to Pete for a detailed review of our financial performance and favorable outlook for 2023.

Thanks, Gus. Good morning, everyone.

We had a strong performance for the first quarter. Our adjusted net income was $566 million, or $2.34 per share. The impact of purchase accounting adjustments was $167 million in the quarter. This included lease premium amortization of $43 million, which reduced our basic lease rents, maintenance rights amortization of $45 million that reduced our maintenance revenue, and maintenance rights amortization of $79 million that increased our leasing expenses. In the first quarter, we recognized $14 million of recoveries related to the Ukraine conflict, primarily consisting of letter of credit proceeds that we received during the quarter. Taking all of that into account, our gap in income for the first quarter was $432 million, or $1.79 per share. I'll talk briefly about the main drivers that affected our results for the first quarter. Basic lease rents were $1,537,000,000, an increase of $43 million from last quarter. This reflected strong cash collections, and we also continue to benefit from power-by-the-hour rents from our lessees that are on PBH arrangements in their leases. As I mentioned, our basic lease rents reflected $43 million of lease premium amortization. Lease premium assets are amortized over the remaining term of the lease as a reduction to basic lease rents. Maintenance revenues for the first quarter were $187 million. That reflects $45 million of maintenance rights assets that were amortized to maintenance revenue during the quarter. In other words, maintenance revenue would have been $45 million higher or $232 million without this amortization. Net gain on sale of assets was $100 million for the quarter. We sold 35 of our owned assets for total sales proceeds of $639 million. That resulted in a very strong gain on sale margin of 18%. As of March 31st, we also had around $600 million of assets held for sale. As I mentioned earlier, net recoveries related to the Ukraine conflict were $14 million, which primarily represents proceeds from letters of credit that we received during the quarter. We've now received payment of all the $260 million of letters of credit that were in place at the time of the Ukraine invasion. Asset impairment was $34 million in the first quarter, primarily due to lease terminations and sales, and was largely offset by maintenance revenue. Interest expense was $436 million, which included $14 million of negative mark-to-market on derivatives. That reflects the unwinding, as expected, of some of the positive movement in derivatives that we had last year. Our leasing expenses were $226 million for the quarter, including $79 million of maintenance rights amortization expenses. Equity in net earnings of investments under the equity method was $33 million for the quarter, again reflecting strong earnings from Shannon Engine Support, our engine leasing joint venture with Safran. We continue to maintain a strong liquidity position. As of March 31st, our total sources of liquidity were approximately $18 billion, which resulted in next 12 months sources to uses coverage ratio of 1.3 times. That's above our target of 1.2 times coverage and represents excess cash coverage of around $4 billion. Our total operating cash flow was approximately $1.4 billion for the quarter, That was driven by continued strong cash collections with a collection rate of over 100%, as well as above average collections from finance leases during the quarter. We generate a significant amount of excess capital each quarter. As a result, our leverage ratio remains similar to last quarter at 2.56 times, and that includes the impact of the $500 million share repurchase from GE in March. Our secured debt-to-toll assets ratio was approximately 14% at the end of March, the same as last quarter, and our average cost of debt was 3.3%, also the same as last quarter. After the upgrades from Moody's and Fitch during the first quarter, we now have BBB flat ratings from all three major rating agencies. We executed $6.7 billion of financing, which included the extension and upsize of just under $5 billion of revolving credit facilities, the extension of around $700 million of bank term loans, and around $1.1 billion of financing from some of our banking partners. This activity, along with our strong performance in the quarter, results in our funding requirement for the remainder of the year dropping from $6 to $7 billion to around $4 or $5 billion, most of which will likely come from the unsecured bond markets. So overall, this was another strong quarter for ARCAP. Once again, we had a high level of transaction activity, our financial performance was strong, we were upgraded by Moody's and Fitch, and we repurchased $500 million worth of stock at a 15% discount to book in connection with the first stage of GE's sell-down. As Gus mentioned, we've also announced a new $500 million share repurchase program through the end of September. As we look out for the remainder of the year, we're affirming our guidance for full year 2023, and we expect to be at the higher end of our guidance range. And with that, operator, we can now open up the call for Q&A.

Thank you. If you would like to signal with questions, please press star 1 on your touchtone telephone. If you're joining us today using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, that is star 1 if you would like to signal with questions. Star 1. And our first question will come from Catherine O'Brien with Goldman Sachs.

Hi. Good morning, everyone. Thanks so much for the time. So maybe just talking about the sales a little bit more, you know, you noted the strong sales margin in the quarter was primarily driven by asset composition. Is that a comment on the aircraft types or age, or is that a comment on proportion of legacy GCAS versus legacy air cap assets? And based on what you have in the pipeline so far towards the $2.5 billion target, I believe you said $600 million currently held for sale. Can you just help us think through how that asset mix compares to what was sold in the first quarter? Thanks.

Catherine, you know, the asset mix is always a combination of, if you want, legacy air cap or legacy GCAS. Both portfolios were carefully constructed of buying when no one else was buying and selling when many are buying. And that's what you see today and you've seen over the last 15 years from us. So the sales market is strong. And I think it's worth just commenting, though, on a few points about that. Sales is one aspect of the business, but the key is the operating cash flows. And we have a strong market now, and we are converting that strong market now into strong earnings, strong cash flows, and capital deployment. Just to quote a couple of numbers, Catherine, for you. In the last 12 months, AirCap has generated $2.2 billion of after-tax adjusted net income and $1.7 billion of book net income. The leverage now, and sales are part of this, Catherine, leverage is now down to 2.56 times. And since the GCAS acquisition, if you look at the December 31 balance sheet, we have 48.4 billion of net debt. Today, we have 45.2. So we've delevered by 3.3 billion. We've given 500 million back to the shareholders. That's 3.8 billion and authorized another 500. That's 4.3 billion of capital in 15 months that we've returned or committed to return to our capital providers. That is a function, of course, of the strong market we see for asset sales, for demand, for all our product types. It could be aircraft, it could be engines, helicopters, freighters. And we are now converting all that opportunity, all those assets into hard cash profits being redeployed for the shareholders. And as we look out for the next several years into the future, with the supply-demand imbalance in the industry, we will continue to see, we believe, strong earnings and cash flows coming out of AirCap.

Thanks so much for that, Gus. And yeah, I mean, definitely a strong track record of M&A by this team, including in a different supply-demand backdrop back in 2014. So So fully appreciate that. Maybe just one on the engine leasing business. We continue to hear from airlines that new tech engines are coming off wing faster than expected. That's driving increased demand for spare engines. Can you just give us some sense of the inbound interest on your spare engines and what lease rates look like versus, I don't know, maybe 18 months ago? Thanks so much for the time.

Like other asset classes, lease rates are up for the engines. And in some cases, significantly up 30 percent plus increases on certain engine types and it's not just limited to new aircraft engine types what we're seeing is in the MRO shops there is a lack of supply of certain critical parts for different engine types which is leading to long lead times which is pushing up demand for spare engines across the board and from what we see they Over the next several years, we don't see that changing. As I said before, these engines are masterpieces of engineering capability to reduce the fuel burn. The challenge is that in certain operating environments, they just don't last as long on wing as was originally envisaged, and the predecessor engines had lasted on wing. Again, those issues, that technology will mature. And over time, we will see improvements in the performance of these engines. But to improve the performance of an engine, to change parts out, blades, et cetera, by the time you get through that process, you're into multi-year. So this isn't something that will go away in the next 12 or 24 months. We're going to see increased demand for spare engines for quite some time to come. And air cap, as you know, is the biggest in the world by a long way in this business.

It's all super helpful. Thank you so much, Gus.

And our next question will come from Moshe Ornbook with Credit Suisse.

Gus, it sounded, you know, from your discussion and the description of the value that's created, you know, by aircraft sales that, And you could probably add to that that in this current environment, you have a couple of other benefits, including reducing the need for marginal funding, as well as reducing the GE overhang. Could you talk a little bit about whether you've taken any you know, thoughts, you know, and, you know, given your comments also about the ABS market potentially coming back and providing other buyers as to whether you're thinking about, you know, kind of a larger scale sale to, you know, to kind of capitalize on more of those opportunities.

Well, I think Moshe, you know, and that's why we put up the chart there. If you look at the slide where on slide six, I believe it is, we show the sales activity by quarter. You can see there, of course, and there was huge dips of asset sales. Aircap was the biggest buyer of airplanes in the world, but no one else was buying. And now we're the biggest seller, obviously, of aircraft in the world, but that's natural given our size. What I would point to you is the trend there. You see how much we sold in Q4 2022. And again, what we've done in this quarter, we've a good bit in the pipeline. We expect to do, you know, two and a half billion if the market is there for more. I'm sure we'll execute on it. And you see, again, the capacity of this platform. Selling assets isn't easy. And you have to have a platform that's capable of doing it. And you could just see in the quarter alone, we sold over 40 assets in just one quarter. So that's the type of volume that this platform can deal with. So certainly if the market's there, you know, we'll do it. We think there's a tremendous investment opportunity for us in buying back our own stock. I think when you look at that example I gave, and this is real life, this isn't a fictional example of what might happen in the future. We're converting the opportunities today for our shareholders. When you looked at that example, we started out at $526 million of book equity on that slide, Joe, if you want to pull it up. By the end of the year, we'd added $317 million onto that. So we turned 100 cents of book equity into 160 cents of it. And that was through the capability of the platform, recycling the capital. You can't just look at a balance sheet, no matter how pristine it is, and be a lazy balance sheet. It's got to sweat. It's got to work. And that means the platform underneath it has to work to make that happen. And you see all that happening in the transactions that this business can do in a quarter and how that manifests itself then in the release of capital the sensible deployment of that for the benefit of our shareholders. And this isn't anything new. We did this before. We had the exact same playbook 10 years ago. De-levered the business, and then once we got through that, between 2016 and 2019, AirCap bought back 43% of the business. So it's not something we haven't done before, and we're working hard for you here.

Got it. Thanks. And Pete, just as a quick follow-up, I mean, I think that the spread, your net spread after depreciation was actually up 10 basis points. I think you had said that that should be stable throughout 2023. Any other thoughts? I think that's been an area, I think that should give people some comfort, but it's been an area of some concern for investors.

Yeah, thanks, Moshe. So you're right, that was up and our lease yield was up somewhat in the quarter as well

So I do think overall the net spread this year should be roughly flat to what it was last year, as I had mentioned before. But we had some little bit more positive results the first quarter than we had expected. I think it's worth noting also just, you know, when we think about net spread, obviously that is a function also of the aircraft that we sell. So, you know, some of the aircraft that we're selling are older aircraft. A lot of them average age 17 years old. Some of them have higher yields. but also have higher risks associated with them. And so we're getting out of those aircraft. That's going to have a dampening effect on our net spread. And so, you know, the guidance I gave, you know, basically factored that into account in terms of the aircraft that we're going to sell, the $2.5 billion that we are going to sell this year, that's predominantly going to be those older aircraft. So that has an effect. But, you know, ultimately, we're not managing to a net spread. We're managing our EPS. We want to grow our EPS, want to grow our book value per share.

And Moshe, that's so important. When people ask about net spread, that's one line item in the P&L. The most important line item is how much money are you making and what is the risk profile of the business? So, well, as Pete said, we sell those assets average age of 17 years. They'll be higher yielding. So if you sell them, you're going to bring down your net spread. But what do we do with that? We went out and we bought back the stock. driving EPS higher, creating shareholder value. That's the key number to look at. And in the meantime, you have a better quality portfolio at the far side because we sold off some of those assets. So when anyone looks at NetSpread, you've got to look at the use of proceeds from sales.

Got it. Thanks very much. Sure.

And our next question will come from Jamie Baker with JP Morgan.

Hey, good afternoon, guys. Could you speak about aircraft placements in 23 and 24, how much you're booked, and I guess related to this, I mean, are you managing placements differently now with the wind behind your back? I mean, are you incentivized to hold aircraft back and shorten the lead time, for example? Ordinarily, investors like to see a really high two-year placement figure. I'd argue at least In the current environment, lower might be better.

Well, I think, Jamie, one of the great advantages we have here and seeing what was happening, particularly in the engine business for the last couple of years, we knew what was coming down the track. And we've been saying it for some time now. We could see two aspects to it. One, we could see it with the engine business ourselves, exactly what was happening every day. We can see every week what's happening to the global engine portfolio when it's coming off wing. What's happening with MRO turn times? Because if turn times lengthen, there's less airplanes available. If you know turn times are going to be longer for years into the future, you know there's going to be scarcity. Dan is the biggest trader of airplanes in the world. we could see that the airlines wanted to buy more and more used aircraft. So we could see that trend coming about a year and a half ago, Jamie, and we were managing it that way. So we've just done a chunky number of placements actually in the middle for 2024 actually right now.

Okay, that's helpful. And somewhat related to that, yesterday Air Lease disclosed that I think 90%, give or take, of their customers are exercising extension rights. which obviously makes sense given the health of the airline economy, paucity of deliveries. You've got a somewhat older fleet. I assume that first-gen lease extensions are more aggressive than second-gen lease extensions. Is that a fair comment?

It is, really, because you've always got to think about it. I've said this before a few times, Jamie. A young fleet or an old fleet, the key is the barbell approach. If you have an asset, and we've had this portfolio strategy for 15-odd years, and you've seen it in prior presentations, that sunset strategy. You know, a young fleet of 737s, 777s is not a good thing to have because you won't get 20 more years out of them. But having 16-, 17-year-old variants is absolutely fine because the airlines need them now and they're buying them. So what we're seeing is we're extending it at 60%, but vitally what's happening is is the airlines are our biggest buyer of older airplanes, freeing up the capital to reinvest in the business.

That's helpful, and I get the strategy, but are you seeing a difference on lease extensions by aircraft age, or is basically the vast majority of your customers requesting lease extensions for all of the obvious good reasons?

I'm sorry, Jim, I should have been clearer. The older ones are being bought.

Okay. Makes sense.

Perfect. Because the airlines don't believe what the OEMs are telling them.

Yeah.

And so we can see that. And so that's where the portfolio strategy over many years is bearing fruit. Are the younger aircraft types, yeah, you'll extend them. But certainly the older stuff, it's a combination of extensions. There's some new leases. But the real interesting trend, and we show that there on the broad buyer base slide, is the amount of purchases airlines are making.

Got it. Thank you for the call, Gus. I appreciate it. Take care. No problem.