AerSale Corporation (NASDAQ:ASLE) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

The rest — their deals we could have won if we chose to raise our bid price and we didn’t. Now the people who bought those assets I can assure you they cannot extract more value out of them than we can. So why they bought those assets at the pricing that they did? There is a growing list of companies that have competed against us in our space that were financed by companies that don’t understand the market by people, who have no personal investment in those acquisitions, who are starting to litter the roads with of companies and people that have overspent and died with product, okay? We’ve been doing this a long time. We don’t overspend. We’ll pass on those four deals, so I’m not going to be apologetic that we didn’t win more than $50 million worth of deals last year.

Because there were $50 million of deal that were properly priced. And in our opinion, the rest wasn’t. And whoever bought those either has no cost of funds, no cost of fund requirement, no threshold, they’ll take a super low margin, which on a risk adjusted basis, I don’t know how they can justify making acquisitions. I mean, when we get outside by more than we think we can collect in total from an asset, I just think that and we’ve seen it that somebody way overpaid. So, competition has been diminished, I would — I think that we’re at about 50% of the amount of competitors that used to bid are now bidding and our success rate is going up, because those companies that have been bidding, that have been somewhat successful now are tempering their bids based on their experience, the ones who survive, the other ones have gone away.

So, if we had two dozen bidders that we would bid against previously, maybe we’re down to a dozen. And it doesn’t mean those doesn’t don’t have money, they still have plenty of money. And it doesn’t mean those doesn’t won’t take a much lower margin than we would. But on a risk adjusted basis, whether that’s a good investment, time will tell.

Martin Garmendia: And a temporary those single dimensional players have an uphill battle with those lower margins.

Michael Ciarmoli: Yes, absolutely. That’s great color. Thanks guys. Love that disciplined commentary. I’ll jump back in the queue.

Nick Finazzo: Okay. Welcome. Good talking to you.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Gautam Khanna with Cowen. Please proceed with your question.

Unidentified Participant: Hey, guys. This is actually Jack on for Gautam today. Thanks for the question. Just back to AerAware and I know you guys provided really good detail about one specific customer kind of talking about some interest here. Just wanted to kind of hear your perspective on incremental customers just other than this one that you’re highlighting? And I know you talked about the 100 kits potentially getting up to 250. Just what do you have to see in regards to their orders to actually like pick up production and start to monetize this further? Thanks.

Nick Finazzo: Okay. Hi, Jack. Regarding — we got too many questions, let’s go back to the first question.

Martin Garmendia: Overall, beyond our launch customer. Other customers

Nick Finazzo: Okay. Yes, okay other customers beyond our launch customer. So, we are talking to a number of airlines that are very interested in the system and their fleet sizes would range from let’s say 20. We have some that could be even smaller, a couple to 20 to 100s, not necessarily 500, but 100s. And as far as our ability to deliver kits to all of those companies at the same time, if we’re fortunate enough to get an offer, that would be challenging. Our ability to increase our production of kits, I think is not problematic for us. We are staffing up our own production of kits, but our kits consist of a number of sub components modifying the radome, manufacturing an installation bracket for the camera. I think it’s an eight-segment wire harness that has eight separate packages.