AerCap Holdings N.V. (NYSE:AER) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Stephen Trent: Great, thank you. I’m having some terrible phone problems, so I apologize if I drop. I missed part of the call because of these issues. But just if I could understand your long term view on the credit rating, do you have an idea in mind in terms of where you guys would like to be rated by Moody’s and S&P over the long term, and–

Peter Juhas: Sure, thanks Stephen. I don’t know if you got cut off there. But in any case, yes, look – we’re triple-B flat across the board now, we’re on positive outlook with S&P and Moody’s, and we hope to get those upgrades from them. Really, that’s a function of how the business has performed – it’s both the resilience that we showed through COVID, through Russia, through all of those things, the improved credit profile of the business coming out of the GECAS acquisition, but also the fact that if you look at any operating metric, whether it’s operating cash flow, net spread, whether it’s FFO to debt, any of those things that are meaningful for the rating agencies, we’re outperforming the competition by a big stretch.

When you look at other companies that may be rated the same, and they look at us and say, okay, there’s a big difference there, we think that that warrants an upgrade, and really that’s what we’re pushing for, so I think if we can get to triple-B plus across the board, that would be great. Look, can we get into the single-As? That’s a different category, I think, but certainly I think there is good reason to think that we could get to triple-B plus.

Operator: As a reminder, to ask a question on today’s call, that is star, one on your telephone keypad. At this time, there are no further questions.

Aengus Kelly: Thank you Operator, and thank you all for joining us for the call. I’d like to let you all know that we will host a capital markets day in New York on May 8, and we look forward to seeing you all there. Thank you very much for your time.

Operator: This does conclude today’s conference. We thank you for your participation.