Alliance Aviation Services Limited (ASX:AQZ)
Australia flag Australia · Delayed Price · Currency is AUD
0.6000
-0.0150 (-2.44%)
Apr 29, 2026, 4:10 PM AEST
← View all transcripts

Earnings Call: H2 2025

Aug 20, 2025

Scott McMillan
Managing Director, Alliance Aviation Services

Thanks, Rocco. Good morning, everyone, from a cold and very dismal and wet Sydney. Really turned on the weather for us. Sitting with me in the boardroom here in Sydney is our newly anointed Joint Managing Director, which I'll explain shortly, in Stewart Tully, and our Chief Financial Officer and Company Secretary, Andrew Evans. They'll be doing most of the talking. I'll talk to you a little bit about strategy, about our aviation services business, and our fleet. First, I'd just like to congratulate Stewart on his elevation to the board. It's been something we've been working on now for quite a few months, and the board finalized the appointment yesterday. We now have a good succession plan in place. I'm not going anywhere anytime soon, so these guys are going to have to put up with me for a long time yet.

The theory behind this is that Stewart, who has been running the business on a day-to-day basis since March of last year, will now have the full reins of the business. We have every confidence in his ability. He'd be on the board of directors, obviously. My focus, as it has been sort of steering over the last probably 18 months, is to really drive our aviation services business. I'll talk to you a bit more about that during the course of the presentation. What I'll do now is to hand over to Andrew Evans in the first instance, and he'll just go through the financial highlights. As we go through, if you've got any questions, just note them down, and we'll do our very best to answer those at the end of the presentation. Hand over to you, Andrew.

Andrew Evans
CFO, Alliance Aviation Services

Thanks, Scott. Good morning, everybody. Next slide, please. Next slide, please.

Thank you. Just the financial highlights there. I'm not going to run through all of them, but the key ones are our business is driven by flight hours. For the fifth consecutive year, we had record flight hours, which drives our revenue and EBITDA, obviously, and they are records as well. Probably the key one, two key highlights on this page is that we've returned to paying the dividends. The board approved a fully franked dividend of $0.03. That's the first dividend since FY 2020, I think, Scott. Also, very pleasingly, our net debt is down to $378.1 million. We were at $425.5 million at December 2024 when we last presented. We've seen very good movement in our net debt position. That's the key highlights from a financial perspective. I'll hand to Stewart to walk us through the operational highlights.

Stewart Tully
CEO, Alliance Aviation Services

Next slide, please. Next slide. Thank you.

As Andrew mentioned there before, we've had a fifth consecutive year of record flight hours, which went up 8.7% to 113,621 hours. That was primarily driven from our wet lease hours, which hit 83,212 hours. We introduced, we completed the 30th aircraft at Qantas under that contract, which went into service in February. We'll expect the full year effect of that in FY 2026. We did have some challenges in 2025, which we've been clear about during the year. A number of weather events, particularly this cyclone in Queensland, which hit our operations heavily in the third quarter, protected industrial action from engineers, and a number of significant aircraft damage events which hit those flight hours during the year. In regarding to staff, we've pretty much stabilized our staff numbers now as we come to our increase in our fleet increase .

We renewed all of our safety certificates, which we're very proud of. Next slide, please. Next slide.

Scott McMillan
Managing Director, Alliance Aviation Services

Yep. Thank you As Stewart said, we're getting towards the end of the growth in our fleet. At balance date, we had 10 undelivered E190s, including the last 10 from the aircraft deal we did two years ago. Since balance date, we've settled on four of those. One of those has already been sold, and that was part of the deal that we announced last year where we're selling six airframes to a company called Air Trade (Ireland) and 12 engines to an engine leasing company in the United States called Beautech. That transaction is now almost complete and settles financially this Friday. Of those remaining nine aircraft that were undelivered at balance date, we intend to take two of those into our operating fleet during the course of this financial year.

The remainder will be onsold as part of our aviation services activity. We may retain some of the airframes for future use, but those aircraft are fitted with very, very valuable engines. I think those of you that follow our company closely are well aware of the issue that's confronting many operators around the world with Pratt & Whitney engines. There's a very significant shortage of GE engines because the Pratt & Whitney-powered aircraft are all grounded. There's a big demand for the GE engines fitted to the Embraer 190. Many of the operators of 190s are retaining their aircraft for quite a few more years yet to run, and they're desperate for engines. That's going to be a good part of our business going forward, trading those engines. That's on the trading side.

On the operating side, we now have the full 30 aircraft into wet lease operations with Qantas. The last of those 30 aircraft went into service in February. FY 2026 will be the first full year of 30 aircraft in service with Qantas. Some of you attended our Investor Day back in May. At Brisbane Airport, you'll have seen the two new, well, new to us, the hangar that we bought from Airbus in October last year. The hangar that contains our head office, which many of you have visited over the years, is on the market still. We have three organizations keenly interested in buying that. We are holding out on it. It's a very valuable property, and we're not in the business of sacrificing them. That will settle during the course of this current year. The final point on that page, I think Andrew will talk to shortly.

We did two fairly significant transactions in aviation services in the second half with the sale of our rotable inventory to a company called Avion. Avion are a very large supplier of spare parts and are the world's largest supplier of Embraer inventory. They even supply Embraer themselves based in Florida. That inventory will remain in Brisbane and will be added to by a fairly significant influx of spare parts from the United States. It's important for us because it's taken the capital off our balance sheet, converted it to cash. The significant inventory that we held in Brisbane now will improve our on-time performance and recovery from delays. All those spare parts will now be based on Brisbane Airport, and we won't be waiting for them to come down from Singapore or from our own stores.

We also, which I mentioned previously, the six aircraft that we sold to Air Trade obviously contain 12 engines. Ten of those have been delivered and paid for. The last two will be, as I said earlier, delivered on Friday and paid for on Friday. We've really got to a point now where we've got total clarity over what we want to do with our fleet. With the Fokker part of the fleet, those aircraft are still performing incredibly well and will remain in our fleet for many, many years to come. The great advantage that we have, of course, is that we own all these aircraft, and we can deal with them in any way, shape, or form, and we're not dealing with leasing companies. With that, that's the end of our fleet thing. I will hand to Andrew, who will go through our EBITDA waterfall. Next slide, please.

Andrew Evans
CFO, Alliance Aviation Services

Yes, one of the key, obviously, to any business is how we convert our profit or EBITDA into operating cash. This financial year, it's a fairly simple slide. We had our EBITDA of $207 million. We then paid our interest, obviously, of $30 million. The inventory there, which is shown at $61.5 million, is basically the replacement of the inventory that we used in our capital maintenance, our base maintenance, and also our entry into service maintenance, which will be talked about in the incoming slides. There's just a small timing difference on receipts and payments and accruals, which basically level you back up to the operating cash and a very strong number of $105.6 million. Very, very simple. Now to talk about the debt position. Next slide, please. We commenced the year by securing additional funding to support our growth over the FY 2025 and FY 2026 year.

We did that in August last year by securing another $150 million through ANZ and Pricoa. Our financiers, ANZ, Pricoa, and NAIP are very supportive of our business, and we're very happy to provide that additional funding. It really sets us up for our future in doing that. Our total debt actually increased. Our net or our total gross debt increased by $137 million, which really was used to fund the acquisition of the aircraft during the year, the purchase of the two hangars, and also our entry into service costs. Pleasingly, our net debt to EBITDA is sitting at 1.8x at the end of the year. We do see this coming down in FY 2026 to probably something like 1.65x- 1.7x. Trending in the right direction, it really is showing that we are in a very strong position from a cash perspective.

I've highlighted there the weighted average debt maturity. This includes not only when the debt matures, but also our mandatory repayments under some of the facilities that we have. It shows that we have no significant repayments required for a couple of years yet. We're in a very strong position from that perspective as well.

Next slide.

Next slide. Thanks. I'll hand back to Stewart.

Stewart Tully
CEO, Alliance Aviation Services

That is in regard to ESG. There's plenty of information on the next three slides. I think for this purpose today, we'll take them as read. However, if there's any questions at the end of the presentation, we'd be happy to take them on these topics. If you could move to slide 11, please, income statement.

Andrew Evans
CFO, Alliance Aviation Services

Thanks, Stewart. I think you've covered the major highlights of our income statements in our opening remarks. As you can see, we had very strong revenue growth, not only across our flying revenue, but also through our aviation services trading. The highlights there, obviously, the aviation services, which Scott has talked about, where we sold five airframes in FY 2025 and another one in early FY 2026. We sold some excess engine cores. We sold the 10 engines to Beautech. We were able to sell our Embraer inventory, as Scott mentioned, to monetize some of the value that we had in inventory there. Probably the number one item here is depreciation has increased from $73 million to $92 million for the year. That's really reflecting the number of operating aircraft as it went from 72 to 79.

The aircraft mix, we're flying more of the Embraers now than from a Fokker point of view, and also the utilization of those aircraft. That depreciation really reflects the increased activity. Obviously, our finance costs have gone up as our debt went up, and that's pretty stable now. It will start to come down as we pay down a little bit more debt. We do get a little bit of a win with the reduction in interest rates as well. From a tax perspective, it's in line with profitability, and we don't forecast any cash taxes to be payable until FY 2027, which is pretty much the position that we've had for some time now.

Next slide, please.

From a balance sheet point of view, a very strong balance sheet with our net assets increasing by 14% year- on- year. More pleasingly, our net tangible assets per share has gone up from $2.39 to $2.70, which shows that we're in a very strong position from that perspective. Key highlights on this page is that our inventory has significantly dropped, not only due to the sale of the Embraer parts, but we also, from an accounting perspective, we've taken the position to transfer some of our rotables of our Fokker aircraft into PP&E, which is probably where they belong. Our total assets mainly increased due to the acquisition of the aircraft, as we've discussed. The right of use assets is just the increase around the leases for the additional hangars that we have at Brisbane Airport now. Borrowings have obviously increased to fund the growth of the capital expenditure.

As I said, it went up $137.4 million for the year. Pleasingly, our net debt dropped to $378.1 million from its peak of $425 million at the end of December.

Next slide, please.

From a cash flows perspective, as I said, our operating cash was very strong, and I've given you the reconciliation there. Pleasingly, our closing cash was up $65 million from June 2024, mainly driven by the aviation services activity with ascenders of FY 2025. Our payments for property, plant, and equipment, as it's outlined there, is all around our expansion of our fleet and the Brisbane hangar. The proceeds and repayments of borrowings, that net increased to $137 million to fund that growth.

Next slide, please.

Capital expenditure, I think we've touched on this already about the payments for our CapEx for the year. Probably the one item I need to point out in the forecast is the number around our engines, where we've got $59.8 million forecast for the next year. We're just taking the opportunity to increase the engine capacities on our Embraer E190s as part of the aviation services trading. Part of the selling of the additional aircraft, we'll take the opportunity to resize and get more cycles in for our engines going forward. It is really more growth CapEx rather than base maintenance.

I'll hand back to Stewart to talk about fleet. Slide 16.

Stewart Tully
CEO, Alliance Aviation Services

Thank you, Andrew. On fleet, Scott touched on most of the topics on this fleet slide already. However, a couple of updates from the half year. We spoke about our transition of North Queensland, that's our Cairns and Townsville base, from Fokkers to E190s. We have completed the Cairns transition, and we're currently in the transition of Townsville base, which will be completed by October. What that delivers us, it delivers us some great operational efficiency by way of pilots, cabin crew, and engineering support. We're currently redeploying those aircraft to a couple of places, both to Brisbane and to Perth, to both help out with operational resilience for our on-time performance and take advantage of some of the new opportunities, particularly in ad hoc charter that we've spoken about over the last year that we sort of haven't been able to deliver because of our capacity.

With the Fokker fleet itself, as Scott said, we'd like to swap those assets, keep them going, and there's no urgency to replace those fleets at all. We'll do that at the right time with aviation services supplies, aircraft, a few at a time over the next few years. We can take more questions on that at the end of the presentation. Next slide to Scott on strategy and outlook.

Scott McMillan
Managing Director, Alliance Aviation Services

Thanks, Stewart. I think the overriding theme here is getting as it goes. As you all know, you've all been very patient shareholders. The Board has an absolute focus on settling all of the growth in, getting the maximum efficiency out of the fleet, our assets, and our staff, and getting the highest cash conversion we can and rewarding shareholders with further dividends. That was an important part of our Board deliberations over the last few months, to give shareholders an indication of where we're heading. The days of sort of 20% and 30% growth in the business are behind us. Our goal is to settle in, concentrate on efficiency and cash conversion. I think in the last six months and in the last four months, I think really that's shown to be a successful start to our new strategy.

As I said earlier, we've got our full 30 aircraft in place now with Qantas. Our relationship with Virgin is strong also, and there's negotiations going on there about some extensions and expansions of the relationship. Up in Rockhampton, many of you have visited our facility up there. We've got another aircraft entering base maintenance, just arrived from the United States on the weekend. The quality of work that's coming out of there is very high. We are, like anyone else in the industry and other industries, finding it more difficult to get qualified staff. Even if we could, the ability to house them in Rockhampton is very low. We do have a very strong apprenticeship program there. We've got 40 people on the program coming through, and they're all local kids, and that process is working well. We will feed our own operations out of that apprenticeship program.

On sort of current trajectory, we hope to have three lines of base maintenance operating by the end of calendar 2027. That will, it's a bit later than we anticipated. The benefit to the company in a whole range of different ways is worth the wait. In terms of the strategy and outlook, the outlook is solid/strong. A real focus on cash and shareholder rewards. As Stewart said earlier, we're at the end of our big hiring thing. Our training programs and all that sort of stuff have fallen back to what we said each day. In terms of staff and staff turnover, it's actually reasonably settled now. That's all working well. From our perspective as management, we will be just really focusing on cost control, cost out efficiency, fleet utilization, and cash conversion. I think that's the simple message. I think we go to the next page, please. Okay.

Thank you. It's a first dot point there. Bernie Campbell has joined our board in February with the retirement of our previous Chairman, Steve Padgett. Important to note, Stewart, Steve has been retained by the business as an aviation advisor for at least the next 12 months. We consult with him on a regular basis. There's a little bio there of Bernie. I won't read it to you. You can read it when you've got an opportunity. As I've said in my opening remarks, I'm very pleased to have Stewart Tully join us on the board and to become Joint Managing Director. Stewart's been with us for 10 years. He's been in the industry for 34 years. He comes from a family that's been involved in the aviation industry for a very long time. We couldn't have had a better candidate.

It's also important to note that the board's appointed a recruitment consultant to identify another director that has aviation skills to bring to the board. The final point there is the company has engaged a corporate advisor to assist the board in a strategic review of the company. That has already kicked off, kicked off in May. We'll have the momentum once we have the end of the financial year program sorted. We get heavily into that in September, and we'll report on that at the AGM. That's the board update. I think with the appendices, we might just go quickly through that, and then we can go to the Q&A. If we go to page 20. Page 20 sets our national footprint for our contract book.

In terms of our contracts, for those that have been following us for many years, we know that we have a very steady and very proud history of contract retention. That map reflects that. One of our great strengths as a business is that we're not scared of geography. We are based all over the country. We are the preeminent provider of FIFO services in the country. We only have one significant contract renewal this financial year. We do have some smaller ones. In all of those, we will be seeking fairly significant increases to offset the additional labor costs that we've incurred. We're about halfway through that program now. It is always a very difficult discussion to have with customers about increasing their rates, but it's a necessary one. When we look at what the outlook is, taking into account all of the new costs.

The important thing from our perspective is that we have 11 EAs. We have only four of those yet to be concluded. Once they're done, we won't be involved in any negotiations for around three years. It will give our HR department an opportunity to be an HR department rather than an IR department. It will be part of our drive for efficiency and out of our staff as well as our out there. There haven't been any significant changes in that national footprint since we last reported to you. As I say, very, very stable operation. Just to give you an example for some of the people that may not have been following us for a long time, one of the great strengths, as I said, is our geography.

If you look at in the middle of the Northern Territory, the Granites, which is the most isolated mine in the world, we fly to the Granites from Darwin, Perth, Alice Springs, and Brisbane. No one else can do that. That doesn't mean that we treat our customer out there in any other way other than a very, very good customer, great relationship. Just to give you an example, that mine is growing, and we're about to start some additional flying for them from Brisbane using the E190s. If we move to the next page, page 21. Since we last reported, there's two new overseas routes that we're flying for Qantas: Port Vila in Vanuatu, and Tsumeb in Namibia. That's those five international routes that we fly for Qantas with Dili, Darwin being one of those. That operation, as I said, now is 30 aircraft strong.

Of course, included on that map are the services that we operate for Virgin. We go to the next slide, please, slide 22, which is our commodity exposure. We have previously presented this as a pie chart. Now we're doing it as a bar chart, and I think it actually presents better. I think that's pretty much self-explanatory. In the FIFO space, our biggest exposure is gold. With the gold price the way it is, all of our gold customers are doing particularly well. One thing there that, again, has been one of our strengths is that we, in the FIFO space, only deal with large companies with large balance sheets and mining minerals that the world absolutely needs. That gives us great stability in our contract book. It's just, I guess, protection against the fluctuations in various mineral prices. That's the end of the presentation proper.

Unless you've got any...

Can we move to a question and answer?

Operator

Absolutely. Thank you. Yes, sir. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star then two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Phil Chippindale at Ord Minnett. Please go ahead.

Phil Chippindale
Equity Research Analyst, Ord Minnett

Good morning, gentlemen. Thanks for your time. First question, just on the active aircraft fleet. So 79 as of 32. You flagged two additional E190s coming into active service over the course of FY 2026. What about on the F 100 side? Are you still expecting to take two out of service issues?

Stewart Tully
CEO, Alliance Aviation Services

Yes. I think we mentioned the first half that we expect two F 100s to come out of service this financial year. That remains the case. We're on track to retire those F 100s, and those E190s will effectively come in and replace those.

Phil Chippindale
Equity Research Analyst, Ord Minnett

When would you expect the E190s to come into active service?

Stewart Tully
CEO, Alliance Aviation Services

We only have one coming into service around November, and the second one will come into service in Q4 2026.

Andrew Evans
CFO, Alliance Aviation Services

It's important to note too, Phil, that in our sort of long-term planning on the fleet, we'd always anticipated just parting those aircraft out, absorbing the spare parts into our remaining operation. However, we're at a pretty advanced stage of a deal for a company in Europe to take those aircraft from us at what we think is a pretty reasonable price. That's been a really good change in the fleet outlook as well.

Phil Chippindale
Equity Research Analyst, Ord Minnett

Okay. Thanks. Just pivoting to slide 14, and Andrew mentioned earlier about $59.8 million on the engines that you're spending in 2026. Can we just delve into that a little bit more detail? What work is being undertaken? How many engines does it impact? I guess a follow-on question for that is, should we expect any of this to be recurring into FY 2027?

Andrew Evans
CFO, Alliance Aviation Services

No. Look, Phil, we're just taking the opportunity as part of the trading of the aircraft that we're going to onsell to increase the capacity of our engines, particularly in the E190 space. It's more growth spend rather than existing fleet spend. It'll be a one-off sort of impact. We've been saying for a while now that our business as usual at exchange forward will sit in that $90 million-$ 100 million space. Multiple ways you can think about that in that we talk about $1 million- $1.2 million per aircraft in service. If you hook all your base maintenance at 5,000 hours for your Fokkers and 7,500 hours for your Embraers, and then said that you were paying down, paying for all of your cycles on your engines on a yearly basis, you come up to the $90 million- $95 million.

From a modeling from a terminal value sort of point of view, you're always wanting to match CapEx to your depreciation. That's where that sort of $90 million- $100 million comes in.

Phil Chippindale
Equity Research Analyst, Ord Minnett

Okay. Thanks. Understood. Last question from me, and then I'll jump back in the queue. Just on net debt, at the main investor day, you had a target of $315 million- $360 million of net debt as of the end of FY 2026. I see you haven't included that in the results presentation. Is that still your expectations or target for the end of the year, or is there any change to that?

Andrew Evans
CFO, Alliance Aviation Services

No, I think that's the range that we would expect. I think that we would probably require a little bit more aviation services trading to get to the lower end of that range, but I'd be comfortable to say that we'll probably hit that $360 million number.

Phil Chippindale
Equity Research Analyst, Ord Minnett

Okay. Great. Thanks. That's it from me.

Andrew Evans
CFO, Alliance Aviation Services

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question today comes from Billy Buolton with Morgans. Please go ahead.

Billy Boulton
Analyst, Morgans

Good morning, guys. Your second half this year was a bit weaker than—a lot weaker, sorry, than your first half. I just was wondering if you could talk about the third quarter versus fourth quarter performance, and also how the business has trended into the first quarter so far this year in FY 2026.

Andrew Evans
CFO, Alliance Aviation Services

Yeah, look, you're right. The third quarter was the weakest quarter that we had, Billy. Our flight hours were down considerably in that third quarter due to the aircraft damage, but also mainly the severe weather events being the floods in Queensland and also the cyclone that occurred in Southeast Queensland in the late part of February. Our hours from Q3 to Q4 went up about 7% and our revenue and EBITDA accordingly. A stronger finish to the year. We've had a good start for July. Our flight hours are up for July as well.

Billy Boulton
Analyst, Morgans

Thank you. Andrew, could we also get some idea about how you think about D&A and net interest next year?

Andrew Evans
CFO, Alliance Aviation Services

D&A will increase. Obviously, we've got more aircraft flying. As I said, the mix of Embraers flying to Fokker s from an hours point of view makes that D&A increase. I would see that going up in the range of somewhere between $100 million- $105 million. The other one was interest. Look, I think that our interest will drop a little bit. We've still got the interest on the lease liabilities, obviously. Our interest will drop slightly as we pay down some debt. We didn't have the full debt for the full year in FY 2025. I'd say that number is somewhere between $28 million and $30 million in total for the year.

Billy Boulton
Analyst, Morgans

Thank you. Sorry, just back on Phil's question about the fleet, am I correct in that you've also got two... You've got two E190s currently in entry into service. You'll have four E190s in total joining the fleet next year?

Andrew Evans
CFO, Alliance Aviation Services

No, we've got two. Out of that eight for them, out of the eight, we've got two coming into service. One enters service in November, one in Q4 2026. You're right, Billy, we had one coming into service this week for the Townsville and one in October to complete the Townsville operation.

Billy Boulton
Analyst, Morgans

Okay, total fleet will sort of come in around 81 aircraft roughly at this stage?

Andrew Evans
CFO, Alliance Aviation Services

When you back out the two F 100s that we retired, it'll be settled around about that 79.

Billy Boulton
Analyst, Morgans

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question today comes from [David Jaliba], a private investor. Please go ahead.

Speaker 8

Hi. Good morning. In regards to the Beautech transactions, in the June release, it mentioned that the engines were surplus to the company's current requirements. In the annual report, it's mentioned that in FY 2026, there's a transaction with Beautech to purchase engines. I'm just wondering, how many engines are being purchased? How does that square with the surplus versus what you mentioned in FY 2026 with the engine CapEx?

Scott McMillan
Managing Director, Alliance Aviation Services

Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for the question, David. It's Scott McMillan. We've got to go back in time just to set the scene, and then the answer will come. When we did the deal with Aircap at the time, there's a... The way that the purchase price works, fixed amount for the airframe, variable amount for the engines, undercap engine eight to use. The aircraft have come to us with much, much younger engines than we need. The engine life on a CF34 engine is 25,000 cycles. An engine with that sort of life remaining is worth about $6.5 million . That's too much capital tied up for us. What we've done with that Beautech transaction is sell out a whole bunch of very, very much younger engines and buy back from them engines that have got much fewer cycles remaining. There are six of those coming back to us.

That feeds our fleet for the balance of this calendar year. We will wade into the market as and when we need engines. We want to buy engines that are in that sort of $2 million- $3 million range rather than the $6 million range. It's all about... We earn the same amount of money off an aircraft with lower time remaining engines we do with high time. It's all about reducing the amount of capital employed. I hope that answers.

Speaker 8

Yeah, definitely. Thank you for that. My second question is about the Avion transaction in regards to the lease and the SLA. I'm just wondering, is Alliance the lessee to Avion in that case?

Scott McMillan
Managing Director, Alliance Aviation Services

Yep, that's all.

Speaker 8

Okay.

Scott McMillan
Managing Director, Alliance Aviation Services

Where's the landlord?

Speaker 8

Sorry. Alliance is the landlord or Avion is the landlord?

Scott McMillan
Managing Director, Alliance Aviation Services

Services Ltd is the landlord.

Speaker 8

Okay. Sorry, I just had my questions here one second. Is there a minimum amount that Alliance has contracted with Avion for over that four-year SLA?

Scott McMillan
Managing Director, Alliance Aviation Services

No.

Speaker 8

No. Okay, thank you.

Scott McMillan
Managing Director, Alliance Aviation Services

Okay, thanks though.

Stewart Tully
CEO, Alliance Aviation Services

Thank you. Our next question today comes from [Wayne Arthur at Monero Superannuation Fund]. Please go ahead.

Speaker 7

Good morning. First of all, I very much welcome the resumption of dividends. My first question relates to industrial relations. You mentioned there are four employment agreements still to be settled. You indicated that during the year, protected industrial action had caused some disruption. Is protected industrial action still ongoing, or has that issue now been resolved?

Andrew Evans
CFO, Alliance Aviation Services

No, that issue was resolved. That was with our Brisbane engineers, and that issue has been resolved. There's been no further threats of protected industrial action. Our enterprise agreement negotiations with those other open agreements are progressing well, and we hope to have those closed in the near future.

Speaker 7

Okay. Thanks. The second question relates to the two ground collisions with aircraft. Now, those sort of things are entirely preventable. I wonder if you can give us a bit more detail about what happened. Was it Alliance staff or was it third-party staff? Were the aircraft able to be repaired, or did they have to be parted out, or what happened?

Stewart Tully
CEO, Alliance Aviation Services

No. Look, in aviation today, our view is that ground damage is probably the biggest threat in aviation today. Airports are busy operations. They're congested. Lots of different ground handlers across the airfields. In these two occasions, one was a catering provider up in Cairns. It was an error by the operator where the truck collided with the aircraft. The aircraft was able to be repaired. It was a significant repair, though. It took the resources from Embraer in Brazil. They came out and our engineering staff in Australia, but it took a number of months to repair that aircraft. It's back in service and fully airworthy, of course. The second event was certainly with an Arrow Bridge. There seem to be events happening around the world these days.

You know how we tackle this as an industry and an organization is really focusing on those human factors, on the training, the set standard operating procedures. We all take learnings and share that across industry to try and stamp these things out. I'd love to say they will be stamped out, but it is a part of aviation. We hope not to see the size of the events that we had over the last year.

Speaker 7

There's been a lot of that happening lately in Sydney and Brisbane, hasn't there? The last question relates to Rex. I hope the company isn't going to do anything silly like buying Rex because it just seems to me it's an entirely different business model. Lastly, the planes that they fly are really old, and there are simply no replacements around for those sort of aircraft. Would you care to comment?

Stewart Tully
CEO, Alliance Aviation Services

Yes, we would. I've got to volunteer for that. I respond.

Scott McMillan
Managing Director, Alliance Aviation Services

Why?

I think you know us better than that, mate. There is no way we would be going anywhere near Rex, and that's not to disparage them. They're RPT operators. We don't do RPT. We have no interest in it. We wish them all the best. No, Alliance had no, not remotely looking at it. It just doesn't suit what we want. You're right, Wayne, that the challenge for them, and it's the challenge for the industry worldwide, is that there's no, apart from ATR, there's no new turboprops coming to the market. It's a worldwide issue. We're fortunate that the part of the industry that we're in, that 100-seat jet market, you've got a number of different choices now. We've got our fleet sorted for the next probably 10 years, 15 years. No, we won't be going anywhere near Rex. I can give you that absolute assurance.

Speaker 7

Okay, thanks. That's all from me.

Stewart Tully
CEO, Alliance Aviation Services

Thanks, Wayne.

Scott McMillan
Managing Director, Alliance Aviation Services

Thank you.

Andrew Evans
CFO, Alliance Aviation Services

Thanks, Ryan.

Operator

Thank you. This concludes our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Mr. McMillan for any closing remarks.

Stewart Tully
CEO, Alliance Aviation Services

Thank you. Thank you all.

Scott McMillan
Managing Director, Alliance Aviation Services

Thanks, everyone.

Andrew Evans
CFO, Alliance Aviation Services

Thanks.

Powered by