Increase was largely due to a one-off gain from the 2015 sale of StandardAero
Dubai: Dubai Aerospace Enterprise (DAE) reported a 283 per cent increase in full-year net income on Monday, with its chief executive attributing it largely due to a one-off gain from the sale of StandardAero.
The Dubai-headquartered aircraft leasing firm made $610.4 million (Dh2.24 billion) in the 12 months to December 31, compared to $159.5 million a year earlier, according to an emailed statement.
“It’s fair to say the leasing business grew in a nice way but the principal increase is from the sale of StandardAero,” chief executive Firoz Tarapore (left) told Gulf News by phone.
DAE, owned by a consortium of local companies, sold StandardAero in July 2015 to New York-based Veritas Capital for an undisclosed sum.
StandardAero is one of the largest business jet maintenance, repair and overhaul firms.
Full-year revenues fell by 81 per cent to $408 million, according to the statement, when compared to the previously declared $2.11 billion revenues for 2014.
On Monday, the company restated its 2014 revenues as $388.5 million to exclude the contribution of StandardAero.
Tarapore declined to reveal the value of the StandardAero sale but said the company plans to reinvest the proceeds “as soon as possible” as long as the “right opportunities” present themselves.
“We are looking to rebuild an aerospace cluster that is solidly anchored in Dubai but still a global presence in commercial aerospace,” he said.
Tarapore declined to reveal specific details of the investments but said “we are not planning to reinvest in the kind of things we had done in the past.”
DAE was set up in 2006 with its eyes on becoming a global aviation industries giant but following the 2008 financial crisis it gradually divested from all divisions except the leasing arm.
Tarapore said he expects profits in the leasing business to grow in the “low double digits going forward” and that there are plans to double the net book value of its portfolio to $8 billion. He did not divulge the time frame.
©Gulf News
By Alexander Cornwell, Staff Report
4 April 2016