Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the investor call for BOC Aviation Limited's first half 2022 results conference call. I will now hand the session to Mr. Timothy Ross to begin today's presentation. Mr. Ross, please go ahead.
Thank you, operator, and welcome everybody to BOC's call to discuss our interim results for the six months ended the 30th of June, 2022. With me today are our Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Robert Martin, our Deputy Managing Director and Chief Financial Officer, Steven Townend, and our Deputy Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer, David Walton. Please note that some of the information you hear during our discussion today may consist of forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from 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 www.bocaviation.com. A conference call presentation is also available in the investor 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 Robert Martin for his comments.
Thanks, Tim, and good evening to everyone on the line. Thank you for joining us for our 2022 interim results earnings call. We reported a net loss after tax of $313 million for the first half of 2022, at the better end of the range that we provided at the beginning of July, and equivalent to a loss per share of $0.45. This compares with a net profit after tax of $254 million in first half 2021. Net assets per share as at the end of June were $7.09. Loss was caused by the write-down of the net book value of the 17 aircraft that remain in Russia, as detailed in our profit warning, and contributed a net after-tax charge of $518 million.
Without the effects of the write-down, our net profit after tax was $206 million, which we will describe as our core net profit after tax. The Board has declared an interim dividend of $0.0889 per share, payable to shareholders of record on the 30th of September. The dividend represents a payout ratio of 30% of the core net profit after tax. The decision to pay a dividend, despite recording a loss for the first half, reflects the one-off nature of this charge and the company's strong cash flow generation, robust liquidity position, and the board's confidence in its outlook. Total revenues and other income increased 8%- $1.2 billion for the first half of 2022. We ended the period with total assets at $23 billion.
In April, we placed a landmark order with Airbus for 80 A320neo family aircraft, the largest in our company's history, and one that ensures a strong future delivery pipeline. Today, we've committed CapEx of $9.3 billion, and we aim to augment this with additional aircraft investment. External environment has been broadly driven by three themes in the first half, covering first, demand for travel, second, supply-side issues for airlines and aircraft manufacturers, driving wage inflation and delays, and third, the ever-changing role of governments impacting our industry. First, the demand environment for our airlines across most of the world has significantly improved, with China and Japan lagging the rest of the market.
Rising levels of passenger traffic and a strong fare setting environment are allowing airlines, particularly in North America, the Middle East, and parts of Europe, to offset the impact of higher jet fuel costs, wages, and interest rates to report better earnings. In recent results announcement, a number of U.S. carriers, including the Big Four, have reported record second quarter revenues, eclipsing even 2019 levels. Others, such as our largest customer, Qatar Airways, have announced record profits supported by a recovery in business class demand and a cargo market that remains substantially ahead of 2019 revenue contribution levels. This is evident in the data provided by the International Air Transport Association, which recorded an 83% rise in total passenger demand for the first half of 2022 compared with the first half last year.
Global passenger traffic is now at 71% of 2019 levels. Significantly, all of this recovery has been achieved with limited contribution from China, the world's second-largest passenger market, whose borders remain largely closed to international travelers. Where domestic activity remained volatile during the first half. However, we know that China has great potential. In 2019, China recorded 74 million international passenger journeys. In 2021, that number was less than 1.5 million. We are confident of a rapid recovery in Chinese outbound travel as border controls are relaxed, which then should ripple across Asia, the Pacific, and to Europe. Second, supply-side challenges remain widespread in the aviation industry today. There are broadly two types.
One hitting the airlines themselves, where due to the rapid ramp-up of demand, airlines, airports, and air traffic control authorities are having labor difficulties as they gear up skilled workforces and face wage inflation in doing that. This is one of the greatest obstacles to the full return of air traffic to 2019 levels. Second is that the aircraft supply chain, getting timely deliveries of aircraft with delays in engines, parts, and shortages of labor. In reflection of this, many airframe manufacturers have modified their production targets, especially for the single-aisle aircraft that dominate their skylines. Airbus has extended by 6 months the timeframe for its production ramp-up of the A320neo family from 45- 65 to the first quarter of 2024.
Boeing currently produces 31 737 MAX family aircraft a month, but has delayed to an unspecified future date the previously announced increases to 47 deliveries a month. Our capital expenditure in the first half continued to be frustrated by these manufacturer delivery delays. These resulted in the slippage of 9 aircraft deliveries into later periods that were originally scheduled for delivery in the first half, as supply chain and regulatory issues hampered manufacturer production and delivery. On a positive note, the 787 is delivering again, as we took the first on the 10th of August, with the second on the 15th of August, both then delivered to American Airlines. These aircraft are the fifth and sixth deliveries in our 22 aircraft transaction. Third, we yet again encountered the impact of governments, both positive and negative, on our industry in the first half.
We were pleased to see the rolling back of border controls and regulations on testing procedures for travel. This accounts for the optimism noted in my demand section above. We very much appreciate that the Singapore government renewed the Aircraft Leasing Incentive Scheme by another five years, and thank the Economic Development Board for its support. Russia-Ukraine situation produced a flurry of controls in the form of different sanctions from multiple governments. These sanctions were rushed through approval by governments, particularly in the EU and UK. These have impacted both lessors and our insurers and will keep lawyers busy for many years. This may require a complete rethinking of aviation insurance.
David will speak about our own insurance situation shortly. At the board level, we welcome two new directors, Mr. Dong Zonglin and Madam Chen Jing, and thank Mr. Liu Chenggang and Madam Zhu Lin, who left the board, for their contributions. I'll now hand over the call to David to speak to our operations and business development, and then Steve will take over for a more detailed review of our P&L, cash flow, and balance sheet.
Thank you, Robert. During the first half of this year, the world's aviation sector continued to build momentum, and this was evident in our own activity levels. We executed 168 transactions covering the purchasing, leasing, transitioning, and selling of aircraft. This was more than double the activity level of the first half of 2021, and we see this sustaining into the second half of this year. We delivered 20 new aircraft to airline customers during the first half of 2022, of which 5 were purchased by the customer at delivery, giving us 15 net new aircraft deliveries onto the balance sheet. Of these 15 deliveries, 10 were from our manufacturer order book.
Our total fleet stood at 608 aircraft as at the end of June, comprising 390 owned and 37 managed aircraft, with an order book of 181 aircraft. Airline customers taking delivery in the first half of the year included Turkish Airlines, Flair Airlines, Azul Brazilian Airlines, and Scoot, a Singapore Airlines subsidiary. Robert indicated earlier our CapEx has been constrained by manufacturer delays. However, we were pleased to see the restart of the Boeing 787 aircraft deliveries. We've now taken the first 2 of nine 787s that we expect to deliver over the balance of this year.
Investor demand for aircraft with leases attached remained solid in the first half of 2022, during which we sold five aircraft from the owned fleet. We continue to build the CapEx pipeline as demonstrated not just by our 80 A320neo family order, but by the recently signed purchase and lease transaction for six A320neo aircraft with JetSMART, an Indigo Partners portfolio company based in South America. During the first half, we transitioned six used aircraft to airline customers with our aircraft utilization rate of 96.1% impacted by the number of aircraft in transition maintenance during the period. Weighted average age of our own portfolio was 4.1 years at the end of June, and our fleet remains 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 8.4 years at the end of the first half of 2022. No operational review of the first half of 2022 would be complete without some discussion of the impact that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has had on our business. At the outset of hostilities, we had 18 aircraft in the owned fleet and 3 in the managed fleet on lease to Russian airlines. By the time that government sanctions on leases to Russia went into effect at the end of March, and all foreign lessors were obliged to terminate leases to Russian airlines, we had repossessed 1 owned and 2 managed aircraft. These 3 aircraft are now placed with airline customers.
We also successfully drew 100% of the letters of credit that we held as collateral, contributing to the $223 million in cash collateral that we were able to offset against the write-down of net book value of the owned aircraft that remained in Russia at 30 June. The cash collateral we held represented 28% of the net book value of those aircraft, which we believe was the highest cash recovery against Russia-related write-downs for our peer group. We filed insurance claims on the relevant policies in order to recover our losses, and we intend to continue to vigorously pursue those claims. As we're sure you'll understand, this is a complex and sensitive matter, and we won't be able to comment further on it for the time being.
Turning to ESG, we continue to work to achieve our targets, which include reducing our energy usage, direct carbon emissions, and waste. The portion of our own fleet that's latest technology continues to rise, increasing to 69% by aircraft net book value, and all future orders are latest technology as well. During the first half, we moved our Singapore head office into new premises, accredited Green Mark Platinum by the Building and Construction Authority. This will positively impact our direct carbon emissions and already provides an enhanced working environment for our employees. Elsewhere, we continue to contribute positively to our local community. In Singapore, we cleared litter from rivers and coastlines, donated toys, and packed food parcels for needy families, while colleagues in our London and Dublin offices also removed rubbish from waterways.
We remain supporters of Airlink's humanitarian initiatives, making donations in response to disasters in Tonga and Afghanistan. With that, I'll turn it over to Steven.
Thank you, David. As already discussed, we were negatively impacted by the Russia-Ukraine conflict during the first half 2022 and reported net loss after tax of $313 million, equivalent to a loss of $0.45 per share. Excluding the impact of this one-off event, our core net profit after tax was $206 million. Lease rental income dropped by 5% compared to the first half of 2021, reflecting the 3% decline in the net book value of our fleet related to the write-down of aircraft that remain in Russia and the absence of $31 million in revenue from the second quarter related to these aircraft. Lease income was also affected by the number of aircraft that were in transition during the period.
Revenue generated elsewhere included $74 million of interest and fee income, which was down around $20 million on the previous year, primarily because of lower fees from funding our airline customers' predelivery payments. Other sources of income rose sharply as we recognized the cash collateral held as security against the aircraft remaining in Russia, which alone accounted for $223 million. Gains on aircraft sales were $13 million, up $10 million on first half 2021, reflecting the age and number of aircraft sold. Our two largest expenses are depreciation and interest, and together they accounted for 90% of the first half total when the effects of the one-time write-down are excluded. Depreciation, our largest expense item, increased by 4% relative to first half 2021, in line with our steady fleet growth.
Finance expenses, our second-largest item, declined 3% - $229 million, reflecting lower debt balances and stable cost of funds at an average of 2.9%, the same as in 2021. Combined effect of all of this was a reduction in our net lease yields to 7% in the first half of 2022 from 7.5% the previous year. Lower production rates and the rapid recovery in passenger demand are, however, having a positive effect on lease yields and values for modern technology single-aisle aircraft, especially those with leases attached. The average price of Singapore jet kerosene rose 89% - $125 a barrel in the first half 2022, also lifting the relative attraction of modern fuel-efficient aircraft.
We've seen this reflected in demand for the aircraft that we sell. For the first six months of the year, we recorded an impairment of $47 million for aircraft other than those that remain in Russia, related to the carrying value of eight 777 and A330 aircraft. This compared with aircraft impairment of $84 million in first half 2021. We also incurred a $6 million charge for impairment of financial assets, a substantial reduction on last year's $63 million. Operating cash flow net of interest expense rose strongly to $717 million, up 29% on first half 2021, as collections improved to 97% from 96% over the same time frame. Finished the half year with cash and undrawn committed liquidity of $6 billion and remained active in the capital markets and the banking markets.
During the first half of 2022, we issued $300 million in bonds and drew $885 million in term loans. Our debt level declined $16.3 billion compared to $16.8 billion at the end of 2021. We ended the first half of 2022 with 76% of our borrowings on fixed rate terms, which has allowed us to resist the upward pressure on global interest rates in our blended funding costs. With S&P and Fitch, we affirmed our A- credit ratings in July of this year after the release of our updated earnings guidance. Our gross debt to equity was stable at 3.3 - 1.
Funds raised from external sources, together with robust internally generated cash flows, saw us repay $1.7 billion in debt with a further $1.1 billion scheduled for repayment in the second half of 2022. These obligations and our capital expenditure can be funded from our cash flow and committed liquidity of $6 billion. We had capital expenditure of over $600 million in first half 2022, primarily related to our aircraft deliveries and predelivery payments. This fell short of our expectations, mostly because of the manufacturer delays in delivering our aircraft. We have over $9 billion in committed CapEx between now and December 2029, which gives us a solid base for future earnings growth.
Finally, on the tax side, we benefited from tax credits of $63 million in first half 2022 as a result of the losses related to aircraft remaining in Russia. Excluding these write-downs, our tax rate on core earnings was 12.1%, up from 11.7% last year. This continued to reflect more assets being booked in higher tax jurisdictions, including the U.S. and the U.K. Now I'll hand back to Robert for his final comments.
Thank you, Steve. The extraordinary external events during the period since the start of 2020 have tested the fundamentals of our business, but we have come through them and demonstrated the resilience of our cash flows and earnings. As a reminder, we've generated over $5 billion in cumulative earnings since our inception. The aircraft operating leasing industry typically trails the projected trajectory of its airline customers coming out of a downturn. With our customers' recovery now clearly progressing and our exposure to aircraft that remain in Russia written down to zero, we are confident about future growth that will get a further boost as Chinese and Japanese borders reopen fully.
We would like to express our gratitude for the continuous efforts of our colleagues, who we thank for their diligence and persistence, to our board of directors for their support and guidance, and we appreciate the ongoing support of all of our other stakeholders. This concludes our review of the industry, our company's financials, and our outlook, and I'll pass the call back to Tim.
Thanks, Robert. This wraps up management's formal commentary. We now have time for Q&A. Out of fairness to others, request that each participant restricts themselves to one question unless time permits for additional queries. I'll hand the call back now to the operator for the Q&A session.
Thank you, Mr. Ross. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. All your participants with questions to pose, please press zero followed by one on your telephone keypad and you will be placed in the queue. To cancel your request, please press zero followed by two. Once again, that's zero one on your telephone keypad now. We will pause for a moment to build up the queue. Your first question is from Hillary, who's from Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open, Hillary. Please go ahead.
Oh, thank you. Thanks for taking my question. You said you sold 5 aircraft in the first half of this year from your own fleet. Could you just remind us what your sales strategy is? You know, what types of aircraft you're targeting to sell, things like that. If you have a target number of aircraft that you're planning to sell this year, next year?
Yes. Thanks, Hillary. It's Robert. Our whole approach towards selling aircraft is to try and keep the fundamentals of our portfolio metrics in line. We tend to sell three types of aircraft. Those approaching 12 years of age, because we want to keep our aircraft fleet full of aircraft less than 12 years old. Those older technology in the fleet and any aircraft where we have a particular risk concentration on a particular customer. Those are the things we look at, and we don't give guidance on the second half of the year. We are planning to sell.
Okay, great. You would expect that number to go up, I guess, going forward?
Yes. Yes.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you. That's helpful. Then just a longer term question for me. You know, I know that the proportion of those, you know, the world's fleet that's, you know, owned by lessors, you know, now past 50%. Just over the longer term, do you see that in that trend increasing over the longer term, or do you see that kind of falling, you know, now that, you know, airlines are on a better footing, you know, in terms of, the percentage of, you know, the fleet being leased versus owned?
Yeah. I think, if I remember our own numbers correctly, we think we're about 52% now in the market that are owned by operating lessors. I see that growing slowly towards 60, but I don't really see it going much above 60. Most airlines, once they've returned to profitability, generally want a mix of aircraft that they leave on their balance sheet and aircraft that they lease from operating lessors to hedge their residuals. I don't see a fundamental change in that, although in the short term, obviously there's a number of balance sheets under pressure in the airline market, and this may drive more demand for basically sale-leasebacks in the same vein, during this sort of near term.
Got it. Great. Thank you so much. That's very helpful.
Yep.
Thank you, Hillary. Your next question is from Michelle, who's from Citi Research. Your line is now open, Michelle. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you, management team. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to raise the question. My question is about the net lease yield. I think I understand that for the first half, because of the airplanes in Russia, we experienced some reduction in the net lease yield. Given we have a full write down of the aircraft, going forward, how should we think about this net lease yield trend, given you know all the things you observed in the market? Can you shed some light? Thank you.
Hi, Michelle. It's Steven here. I think the, you know, as you said, one of the reasons for the fall was the absence of the rental income on the aircraft that remain in Russia. The other one was the number of aircraft that David talked about, which were in maintenance and transitioning between different lessees. Those were also not earning revenue during the period. I think as we move into the second half of the year, as you say, the Russian aircraft or the aircraft that remain in Russia have been taken out of the equation here. Those other aircraft should all get delivered to their new lessees during the course of the second half. We should start to see that tick up.
Also I think the third element that we will start to see now is that, as the delays from manufacturers are working their way through the system, as both Robert and David talked about, we're now starting to take delivery of these 787 aircraft, which we've been waiting a long time for. That should also help as well. I think this should be the bottom, and we should start to see an upturn as we move through the rest of the year.
Thank you, Steven. If we have, like, a longer term horizon, if we strip out Russia, strip out those aircraft in transition, how should we think about maybe from a longer term perspective? Thank you.
Michelle, this is Robert. Maybe I'll take that one. Basically, as I mentioned in the presentation, the earnings of a leasing company in a normal cycle, we would expect to lag the airlines coming out of the downturn. The reason for that, if you think about it, if you place aircraft during a recession, they're gonna be placed at lower yields than in a recovering market. There's a time lag between the market turning and the impact of that increased net lease yield feeding into your book.
Okay. Okay.
The way to think about it is your net lease yield then should gradually come up after the downturn. Starting next year, I think that should happen.
Yeah. Yeah. It's very clear. If we focus on, like, the new lease we signed maybe this year or under negotiation with the potential customers. Basically my question is can we pass, you know, the pressure from rising yield from the funding side to the customers for
Yes, in a word.
Yeah.
The way we write our leases is what we call floating fixed, where we basically agree a lease rate today, but the actual lease rate is only fixed on delivery, depending upon the change in interest rates between now and delivery.
Mm-hmm.
Now I just want to sort of give some context. For any large leasing company, you must remember, if you take us as an example, we've got $20 billion of assets and net book value on our books. We will not add $20 billion of new deals every year. You know, if you add $4 billion, that's the equivalent of 20% of your book.
Mm-hmm.
As you grow, the ability to pull that net lease yield up rapidly is more difficult just because of the base size of your portfolio you're beginning with. Does that make sense?
Yeah. Very clear. Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you, Michelle. Your next question is from Karen, who's from Credit Suisse. Your line is now open, Karen. Please go ahead.
Hi, thank you for taking my question. I heard that the management mentioned the collateral to the net book value for the Russian aircraft is around 28%. I think that the number is quite impressive, and I think that is much higher than the average. I suppose the average number for the portfolio should be like less than 10%, right? I just wonder what is the key driver behind that number? Because like, before all this Russia and Ukraine situation, why would you prepare such a high collateral ratio for your Russian aircraft?
Is it because like these airline credits in your eyes are much weaker than the credits from your other clients, or is it because of the country risk? I just wanna know the rationale behind that consideration. Are there any other like regions in the country or your clients or countries that you are also expecting a high collateral rate?
Karen, it's Robert. Thanks for the question. Basically, one of the differences between us and some of our peer group is right the way through the management team, we're very risk aware. When we put transactions in place, we don't just let a marketing guy go off and do the transaction. It's approved at our revenue committee before we sign an LOI. As part of that revenue committee process, we will discuss a number of factors, including the airline credit, the jurisdiction as to whether we can easily repossess from the jurisdiction, and things about as well, the total amount of risk we're taking to any one particular country. To put it in context, you know, sort of Russia for us was 2.5% of our total assets.
We kept it as a reasonably low component and lower than sort of its proportion of the world traffic. We take all of those things into account. You'll tend to find that with emerging markets where we're concerned about the ability to repossess, then we will take more security.
Got it. Yes. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question is from Parash from HSBC Hong Kong. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Sure. Thank you for taking my question. Madam, if you can help us to understand two parts of the question. First, with respect to the net yield realized, given first half was challenging in many fronts, is it fair to assume that in this cycle, probably the first half of 2022 would likely to be marked as the floor in terms of net yield? Secondly, on slide 21, when we look at the difference between your fixed rate yields versus fixed rate debt, the spread is now 20 percentage points. You have benefited thus far with the declining interest rate. From here on, do you have intention to move your fixed rate debt to match the fixed rate yield?
Otherwise, if you can help us to run through the sensitivity of, let's say, 50 basis point change in interest rate, how would this impact it to me? Thank you.
Okay. Thanks, Parash. Maybe I'll take the first one and Steven take the second one. The first half, you're correct, was unique in a number of ways for us. Remember how you calculate net lease yield, and so you take an average yield over the half year. When we basically look back, there are sort of three things that were special. One is, of course, we only booked the Russian revenue until we'd received the last amounts in cash, which would have been in March. But we didn't write down till the end of the period. The second thing is we had a number of aircraft in transition that were placed earlier in the year, but we're putting them through maintenance during that period to get them back up on lease. I think it was 17 in total.
We weren't getting revenue from those aircraft. Obviously that won't be the case for the second half. Once they're back up on lease, we'll have revenue for their aircraft. The third thing was the lack of capital expenditure due to these manufacturer delays, which also meant in terms of putting new aircraft on the books. With good rentals, we didn't get the positive impact of that in the first half of this year. To answer your question, I think yes, probably when we look backwards, sort of in two, three years' time, this will probably be the norm.
Okay. Parash, maybe it's Steven, and I'll take the second one. I think when you look at the way we build the liability side of our balance sheet, what you always have to bear in mind is that we are not a static business. We've constantly got aircraft coming in and aircraft going out, because we're buying and selling, but you've also got changes in the lease portfolio when we are remarketing and, you know, extending, transitioning aircraft. What we never want to be would be to be 100% matched because one day later we'd be mismatched. We're always maintaining that.
What we also always want to maintain is some element of floating rate debt in the portfolio because when we sell, it's much more easy to break that without having to have any mark-to-market issues. The final point is also that part of this is used to fund the predelivery payments, and it isn't all just about the aircraft that we own. On that side of the balance sheet, I think that's the way we think about it, and we don't want to be, if you like, overly matched.
The other thing as Robert did talk about on the asset side of the balance sheet, the way that we structure the leases is that for by far the majority of the aircraft that we've placed in the future, those will continue to adjust for interest rates until the point at which they deliver. Again, you know, it isn't that what we've locked in as funding today needs to cover those future deliveries because that adjusts as well as we move forward.
No, fair. To this point, hypothetically, if the interest rate on your existing debt increases by 50 basis points, I presume your leases would not move in the same fashion because lease is fixed because they are already within the contract period. Does it make you on the margin more vulnerable in a rising interest rate environment? I understand that that's the risk that every business needs to take, but is it a fair way to understand?
It's part of the picture but not all of it because, A, you have all those aircraft moving in and out all the time, which I already talked about, so it's not a static portfolio.
Yes.
Also, where we're earning the PDP income as well on the other side can also be floating rate, you know-
Fair
It isn't that you're just funding a static portfolio on any single point in time. It's not a totally linear correlation, I don't think, Parash, in the way that you're thinking about it.
No, I get your point now. That's clear now. Thank you so much.
Okay.
Thank you. Your next question is from Shashank from Somerset Capital. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Thanks for the call and the opportunity. My first question is for Steven. If you look at the lease rental income, that basically declined by roughly $60 million. If I understand, the exposure to the Russian aircraft would have been around half of that, if you have not received payments for three months of the year. Is it fair to say that another $30 million was from the other aircraft which were under maintenance and transitioning?
I think that the drop in rental income that I talked about, as you say, I don't think it was quite $6, I had about $50 in, at the top of my head, of which sort of 30 of that was from the Russian leases as I talked about. The bulk of the rest, yes, was from the aircraft that we have that were transitioning from one lessee to another that were not earning income during the period. Once we have all of those back on lease, we should catch up that proportion. Obviously, until we can actually get the aircraft that remain in Russia returned back to us and be able to remarket them, that piece of the revenue won't return.
Exactly. There's also one other bit to it. We had a number of aircraft just coming off lease at the end of 9-year leases and 10-year leases in the first half. Obviously, the rental you achieve on a 10-year-old aircraft is different to what you would have got on a new aircraft 10 years before, so you have a step down in lease rental as well on some aircraft.
Right. Is that the reason why the utilization rate is 96%? Does that reflect the aircraft under maintenance and transitioning as well?
This is David. You're absolutely right. Those aircraft which were in transition maintenance during the first half had an impact on the utilization rate. As Steven and Robert have said in their earlier comments, those will be back on lease in the second half, and we'll see a recovery in that utilization rate.
Okay. At the end of June, you mentioned that you own 390 aircraft. Does this still include the Russian aircraft?
Yes, Shashank, it does. We still own them. We've written them down to zero, but we still own the aircraft.
Okay.
Our intent is still to get them back if we can. We're not giving up ownership.
Right. Final question, like, given that aircraft values are now rising, and do you see an end to the impairment charges on your non-Russian aircraft as well?
Shashank, it's Steven. Yes. I think we've seen that already coming down year-over-year on the non-Russian part of the fleet. I think that will continue. I think what we've already seen is values coming out of the appraisal firms for the narrow-body aircraft are already going back up. I think what we should be seeing now that the values for the wide-body aircraft have at worst bottomed out, and I'm hopeful that as we move into the second half of this year, we should start to see that come back up as well. A little bit how Robert talked about earlier in terms of how things lag the profit trajectory of the airline customers.
This is another thing that always lags a bit because the appraisal firms are only reflecting what they see in the market. They never buy and sell aircraft themselves. It takes a bit of time for that to flow through into their valuation. There is typically this lag that we see as we come out of any downturn.
Great. Okay. Thanks a lot.
Okay. Thanks, Shashank. Operator, we've got time for one more question, so if there's anyone who hasn't asked a question yet and would like to get one in, management's got time for one more.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to queue for a question, that's 0 followed by 1 on your telephone keypad now. Your next question is from Cheryl, who's from CICC. Your line is now open, Cheryl. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for the presentation. I just have one question. May I know your upcoming financing plan, the rest of 2022, both like mainly like U.S. dollar bond issuance pipeline, if you have any? Thanks.
Thanks, Cheryl. It's Steven. Obviously that will depend on the level of CapEx that we have during the course of the year. You know, we have, I think as I covered in my remarks earlier, I think $1.1 billion to refinance as we move through the year. We actually repaid one of our bonds one month early today, which we were able to do under the documentation because we were long on cash. I think as we move forward through the rest of the year, there'll be an amount of refinancing that we need to look at. I think in the bond market, we need to see a bit more stability.
You know, what we've seen there is that, yes, the base rate has gone up, but also margins generally have expanded. For us much less than our peer group, but more than we feel is real value for us at the moment. You know, we'll be watching that market carefully, but I think the bulk of what we'll be doing in the second half of the year will be the refinancing.
All right. If the bond market-
Sorry. One more.
Sorry.
Sorry. Go ahead, Cheryl.
Yeah, sorry. Just wanted to ask, so if the market is not favorable for your bond issuance, then would you be like continue to tap on your credit facilities or do more refinancing via maybe banks borrowing? Like, what are the other options for you?
I guess first of all, the beauty of sitting on $6 billion of available liquidity is that we're very rarely going to be backed into doing something where we don't think the market is right for us. You know, it enables us to be opportunistic. It enables us to time our entry into different markets. You know, we have all of that available liquidity. We've got 0 drawings under any of our revolving credit facilities today, which gives us a huge amount of flexibility in what we can do. Clearly, if we see opportunity, yes, we don't say that we won't go to that market. You know, we will be selective, and we're fortunate that we have the ability to time our entry into those markets, you know, when it is most favorable to us.
All right. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Cheryl. Your next question is from Sabrina, who's from JK Capital. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Hello? Can you hear me?
Yep. We can hear you, Sabrina. Go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for your time. I just have one question regarding your order of A320neo airplanes in one go, and your delivery schedule. Could you provide some background why you did the deal, a record deal? I don't remember ever you did that size. Could you provide some background why you decided to do this deal in one go at this time? What is your delivery schedule by the year and placement schedule by the year?
Sabrina, I'll start off with the long-term strategy, and then Dave can probably add to it as he was the guy in the ditches negotiating for us. The first thing is we started negotiating this order a year before we actually consummated it. It didn't just happen overnight. We take a long-term view of the business, and we intend to be a long-term player. We always want a delivery stream with both of the big manufacturers. We're getting to a point whereby with both of them, our orders in total have diminished below 100 orders. What we've learned over our history is that to have consistent orders in place with both of them is very, very important to us. That's the reason why we engaged when we did.
You can imagine when we started doing this back in 2021, there weren't a lot of other people negotiating orders at that point in time. David is a slow and patient negotiator, and his team. Basically, during the negotiation process, we focused on what was important to us, and particularly as well, the mix of aircraft, where this time around, we had a much greater A321 content than we've had previously because we see that's a general trend in the market, where the demand for the larger aircraft is coming from our airline customers. Dave, go on.
Yeah. Thank you, Robert. I would just give a little bit more detail, which is, you know, you were asking about the delivery schedule. These deliveries will be 2027-2029. What we've done is we, as Robert said, we began our discussions with Airbus quite some time ago and optimized when we could get the best delivery positions and in bulk and to get a good price, of course, which is our top priority. You know, that was part of the discussion with Airbus. But as Robert said, we have ongoing discussions with both of the major OEMs as well as with the engine OEMs. We are in, you know, almost daily communication with these very important stakeholders, and we're looking for opportunities to add to our CapEx pipeline on all fronts, and we'll continue to do that.
Maybe I should add, Sabrina, you'll have noticed we also supplemented that order with doing other transactions directly with airlines, and we'll continue doing that, on both the Boeing and the Airbus side, where we picked up additional deliveries from airlines with excess deliveries in the first half of this year. I expect that to happen again in the second half.
Right. Since you started negotiation a year ago, does it imply that your pricing reflects the market situation back then? Or should we look at the situation today? Because,
Yeah. They go down, and then they go up in our negotiations.
Okay. Yeah, 'cause one of your peers said on their call that they placed the order in 2020 when everything was just gloomy. Placing order now is, you know, a different pricing. I was just wondering what is the background of this deal. I was hoping if you provide some color on that. On the delivery schedule and placement schedule, I meant to ask.
Sabrina, we should just note. Sorry. When that other operating lessor was placing orders in the future, we did $7 billion of purchase and leasebacks with the best airlines in the world at their pricing. There is no one correct answer to strategy. They are just different strategies, and we were the guys with the money in 2020.
All right. On the placement ratio by the year, next year, 2023, 2024 and 2025 and all the way to 2029, would you be able to provide a placement ratio for next year? Let's say out of the deliveries for next year, how much is placed already?
We typically place our aircraft 18-24 months in advance of the delivery. If you think ahead to say this landmark Airbus order we placed, we won't start working on those placements for quite some time.
Okay. Wonderful. Thank you.
Great. Okay. Thank you very much, everybody, for your participation in today's call. Please don't hesitate to contact me directly on Timothy.Ross@bocaviation.com should you have any follow-up questions. Thank you very much, operator. We can now terminate the call.
Thanks, everyone.
Thank you.