FTAI Aviation Ltd (NASDAQ:FTAI) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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Frank Galanti: That does. Thanks. And so sort of digging in onto the three whole engine CFM sales. So based on last quarter’s reclassification of the V2500 gain on sale from that Leasing segment into the Aviation segment it’s sort of my understanding, right? So when you sell full CFM56 engine that shows up with three modules and the result of a gain on sale the Aerospace segment. So just confirm for me that that’s correct. And then so how many of those setting two modules for full engines? And of those engines sold how many of those engines did you sell with sort of the same three modules that you had purchased them with?

Joe Adams: I have no idea. I don’t when we sell a whole engine as I said it’s the customer’s choice. If they wanted to take their fan off and only buy two modules they can do that. So we don’t really think of it any differently and we don’t break it out that way. It’s not relevant to us as — from a business operation. So I don’t have any numbers on that.

Frank Galanti: Okay. But just like if you purchased an engine in COVID and did no work on it it’s sort of no value-added work. When you sell that — is that showing up in Aerospace EBITDA?

Joe Adams: Well, there’s no such saying as an engine that sits around for two to three years. So that doesn’t happen. When we buy an engine we put it into the facility and it’s split into three modules. It’s either repaired torn down or combined reassembled into an engine. So that doesn’t happen.

Frank Galanti: Okay. So then just to be clear, every CFM56 engine goes through the module factory in some capacity?

Joe Adams: No. I mean we’ve bought airframes, sold the airframe and leased engines directly. If the engine doesn’t require work, it doesn’t go into the module factory.

Frank Galanti: Okay. That’s really helpful. I appreciate you taking my questions. Thank you very much.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Robert Dodd with Raymond James. Your line is now open.

Robert Dodd: Morning, everybody and congrats on the quarter. Thanks for all the details about cash flow and potential use of funds et cetera to pay down debt. You did mention the dividend. I’m going to ask about the dividend. I mean you’re barely yielding more than the S&P 500 given the stock performance. Is there — I mean you mentioned maybe increasing the dividend later this year with the cash flow you’re going to generate. Is there a rule of thumb you’re thinking of? I mean, way back in the past there used to be a two times FAD coverage we’ll think about the dividend. Obviously the whole — the metrics are different now. But is there a rule of thumb we should think about, as to what would you view as the comfort necessary to increase the dividend from what I do right now?

Joe Adams: Yes. You’re right. We really haven’t thought about the coverage calculation recently for the last four years or five years, but you have the history. No, I don’t think that’s necessarily the way we’re approaching it today is it’s more — we have investments. We want to have a strong BB. And then when we have excess cash, we’ll return it to shareholders somehow. That’s kind of the waterfall.

Robert Dodd: Got it. Thank you. And one more if I can. On the capacity question, you’re really opportunistic when you added the Lockheed capacity for example, during COVID and the facility was being underutilized, and we were very opportunistic kind of locking that up long-term. Are those kind of, — facilities aren’t being unutilized now, right? There’s backlogs everywhere. Are those kinds of opportunities going to be available? Or is it going to be any — is an expansion in capacity going to be more — is it going to necessitate an acquisition or be capital intensive? Or are you going to be able to find capacity on an as-needed basis do you think?

Joe Adams: There’s capacity out there. There are some shops that — I mean the successful shops — the large shops are very busy. And they have — and many of them have now geared turbofan work that they either want to do or have to do which is sort of squeezing out some other capacity. But there are lots of other facilities out in the world that we look at and see and we also have partners in different parts of the world. So the opportunity for the maintenance side it’s more of a — it’s available. And we have plenty of capacity right now, but we are always looking ahead and trying to stay in front of it. So yes, there’s still opportunities maybe not the same as during COVID, but there’s — it’s a big industry and it’s global. There’s lots of smaller and medium-sized players out there.

Robert Dodd: Yeah. Got it. Thank you.

Joe Adams: Yeah.

Operator: Thank you. And I’m currently showing no further questions at this time. I’d like to hand the call back over to Alan Andreini, for closing remarks.

Alan Andreini: Thank you, Shannon. And thank you all for participating in today’s conference call. We look forward to updating you after Q2.

Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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