EFG Hermes Securities Brokerage Conference Title: Jazeera 3Q19
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EFG Hermes Securities Brokerage – Jazeera 3Q19 Results Conference Call Company: EFG Hermes Securities Brokerage Conference Title: Jazeera 3Q19 Results Conference Call Moderator: Hatem Alaa Date: Tuesday, 5th November 2019 Conference Time: 16:00 (UTC+03:00) Operator: Good day, and welcome to the Jazeera Airways’ Third Quarter 2019 Conference Call. Today’s conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Hatem Alaa. Sir, please go ahead. Hatem Alaa: Hello everyone. This is Hatem Alaa from EFG Hermes. And welcome to Jazeera Airways’ 3Q 2019 Results Conference Call. I’m pleased to have on the call today Jazeera’s CEO, Rohit Ramachandran, and the company’s CFO, Krishnan Balakrishnan. I’ll now hand over the call to Rohit for a quick presentation that will be followed by a Q&A session. Rohit, please go ahead. Rohit Ramachandran: Thank you very much, Hatem. Good afternoon, everyone. It really gives me great pleasure to welcome you once again to the Jazeera Airways earnings conference call for the third quarter. I’m sure that by now you would’ve read our preliminary results published after the Board meeting yesterday, posting the strongest third quarter and nine months results ever in the company’s history, even when comparing it with the time when we used to have the aircraft leasing business many years ago. We look at this as a very positive sign that we are strategically headed in the right direction, and see it as an encouragement to continue our business development activities. As you are familiar by now, we will go through the coming slides in order to dig deeper into the details of our Page | 1 Ref 6975985 05.11.2019 EFG Hermes Securities Brokerage – Jazeera 3Q19 Results Conference Call operational and financial performance, as well as the outlook for the third quarter – fourth quarter of the year. And also shed some light on some of the interesting initiatives that we are working on. So, I suggest that you can open the presentation that was uploaded to our website a little while ago. And I will jump directly into slide #7. The airline posted yet another quarter of growth in this year. The number of passengers that we carried was up by 14% over an already strong third quarter of last year. This was driven by a slight increase in our load factors and an addition of two aircraft to our fleet during the summer season. Utilization of our aircraft remained practically the same during the year with a marginal 2% drop to 14.5 hours, which is still industry leading. Further, the third quarter yields also saw a decent increase of 5%, standing at almost KWD49 up from KWD46.5 in the same comparable period last year. We continue to keep a close eye on external factors affecting yield movement, while maintaining an internal focus on this critical KPI. In the next slide, as a result of these operational achievements, Jazeera revenue for the period came in at KWD35.5 million, up from KWD29.2 million in the comparable quarter, reflecting a growth of 21%, while operating profit soared to 38% at KWD10.5 million. Net profit reported for the third quarter is KWD9.9 million, the highest ever in the history of the company. These earnings come as an outcome of our relentless analysis of the regional aviation ecosystem and a continuous, almost fanatical focus, on implementing our cost control mechanisms and expansion plans, which combined, gradually positively impacting our financial results. In the next slide, you will see that our e-commerce and ancillary revenue are also showing healthy signs of growth as we continue to modify our offering in order to better interact with the needs of our customers. Page | 2 Ref 6975985 05.11.2019 EFG Hermes Securities Brokerage – Jazeera 3Q19 Results Conference Call Moving onto the nine months operational highlights in the next slide. Jazeera – the number of passengers that we carried for the year increased by 18% to stand at 1.8 million compared to 1.5 million last year, while also driving up our load factors by 2% during the first nine months of the year, to register at 78%. Utilization is also up 1%, while yields increased by significant 7.3%. So, the next slide, these operational achievements were translated into a strong financial performance with a 30% increase in revenue at KWD83 million versus KWD64 million during the first nine months. In the absence of any one-offs or any unfavorable events, you will recall that we had a couple of one-offs last year. This year we did not have any. This means that Jazeera’s operating profit increased by 91% to KWD17 million, while net profit jumped by 90% to KWD16 million against KWD8.5 million in the comparable period last year. Once again, this marks the highest nine months net profit in the history of the company. Similarly, we also managed to grow our ancillary revenue by 32% during the first nine months of the year. Moving onto slide 14. We’d like to cover some of the recent operational highlights. We are proud to announce that we started flying to London Gatwick on October 27th to become the first low-cost airline from the GCC to ever land into London. Initially, we started a four-times-a-week service and that will be ramped up to a daily service in December. Further, as we take delivery of new aircraft, we are also announcing the launch of several new routes, one of which is to Osh in Kyrgyzstan. Now, I will cover some of the new routes as we move into the next slides. But Osh, in particular, is interesting because it is currently unserved to the Middle East and Kyrgyzstan is an Islamic country. And with this service, we are able to cater to a large number of them who want to travel for the Umrah and Hajj pilgrimage. In fact, we have operators who were already contracted 75% Page | 3 Ref 6975985 05.11.2019 EFG Hermes Securities Brokerage – Jazeera 3Q19 Results Conference Call of our flights. We’re also planning to start, during this quarter, Karachi and Kathmandu, both of which I will cover in slightly greater detail later in the presentation. One of the focus during the year was to regain our preeminent position with respect to on-time performance. I’m very happy to announce that in addition to the financial results, our on-time performance during the third quarter and the very important summer period made a remarkable recovery and now, we are in the 90% range. This was achieved by the addition of one more gate in our Jazeera Terminal T5, and also supported by the two new aircraft that joined the fleet during the high season. Further, we also are developing new sales ventures, including a new Jazeera holiday service in partnership with one of the large travel companies in the Gulf. Going to slide 15, you will see that our market share on almost all the destinations that we serve remains strong, especially when focusing on the destinations that were launched since the beginning of last year, as Jazeera gradually becomes a key player on these routes and passengers become more familiar with our brand. In slide 16, we highlight the evolution and the composition of our network as we increase our operation into Eastern Europe or the CIS and the Indian subcontinent. In the latter, we continue to carry more passengers to and from our six operating destinations in the subcontinent and this will be complemented with the new routes in the coming days. Year-to-date, we witnessed growth in the number of passengers to all destinations that we operate to. However, of course, the composition of the total figure in this pie chart will continue to be altered as we launch more and more new destinations. Page | 4 Ref 6975985 05.11.2019 EFG Hermes Securities Brokerage – Jazeera 3Q19 Results Conference Call Let's now move onto some information about our Jazeera Terminal T5. I’m glad to announce that T5 reported a third quarter of profit since the opening, registering an EBITDA of KWD632,000 and a net profit of KWD418,000 in the third quarter of 2019. For second half of the year, we’re seeing some positive dynamics as we now have managed to receive all the required licensing, which means that we are now able to collect rent from all the units that have already been leased on both the land sites and air sites. All 1.8 million Jazeera passengers flew through T5 during the year, which is encouraging, significant improvements in retail offering. In the meantime, other revenue streams such as lounges, parking and concessions and now – are now either fully operational or in the last stages of being implemented. A word about our outlook for the rest of the year. Looking into the fourth quarter, we have strategically opted to increase the number of destinations that we start in this quarter as we gradually received additions to our fleet. We already welcomed one of the three brand new A320neos that were scheduled for delivery in the fourth quarter, which came in on October 18th, which is last month. And this was the aircraft nine days later that flew to London. Further, the new deliveries, along with the existing fleet, will be used to start operations to seven other destinations, bringing the total number of destinations launched in 2019 to nine after taking Bodrum into account.