Air Lease Corporation Announces Fourth Quarter 2012 Results and Declares Its First Quarterly Cash Dividend on Its Common Stock

LOS ANGELES—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Air Lease Corporation (ALC) (NYSE: AL) announced today the results of its operations for the three months ended and year ended December 31, 2012.

Highlights

Air Lease Corporation reports another consecutive quarter of fleet, revenue, profitability and financing growth:

Diluted EPS increased 117% to $1.28 per share for the year ended December 31, 2012 compared to $0.59 per share for the year ended December 31, 2011. Diluted EPS increased 58% to $0.38 per share in the fourth quarter of 2012 compared to $0.24 in the fourth quarter of 2011.
Revenues increased 95% to $656 million for the year ended December 31, 2012 compared to $337 million for the year ended December 31, 2011. Revenues increased 65% to $190 million in the fourth quarter of 2012 compared to $115 million in the fourth quarter of 2011.
Income before taxes increased 146% to $204 million for the year ended December 31, 2012 compared to $83 million for the year ended December 31, 2011. Income before taxes increased 58% to $61 million in the fourth quarter of 2012 compared to $39 million in the fourth quarter of 2011.
Added 14 aircraft (including 11 aircraft from our order book and three opportunistic/incremental aircraft) and sold one aircraft from our fleet, growing our fleet to 155 aircraft spread across a diverse and balanced customer base of 69 airlines in 40 countries.
Ended the fourth quarter with a composite interest rate of 3.94%, adding debt facilities aggregating $611 million during the fourth quarter and through February 28, 2013 and increased the Company’s unsecured debt as a percentage of total debt to 60.2% as of December 31, 2012 compared to 31.7% as of December 31, 2011.
Based on strong Company performance to date, our board of directors declared ALC’s first quarterly cash dividend of $0.025 per share on our outstanding common stock.

“We more than doubled our year over year profits in all metrics—Income before taxes, Net income and Diluted EPS. The young age of the highly desirable aircraft types in our globally diversified fleet continue to deliver strong results for our shareholders. Owing to the financial success of the company since inception three years ago, our board has declared the first quarterly cash dividend on our common stock as part of a new dividend policy,” said Steven F. Udvar-Házy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Air Lease Corporation.

“To further enhance ALC’s growth during Q4 we took advantage of opportunistic transactions and acquired 3 incremental aircraft over and above our new order pipeline. We concluded the first sale of an aircraft from our fleet and profitably redeployed a 737-800 from a troubled carrier. In addition to the strong execution of our business plan during the quarter, we worked equally hard to grow our future performance by increasing our orders in the last few months for additional aircraft from Airbus, Boeing and ATR. We continue to place these aircraft with high quality airline customers many years into the future,” said John L. Plueger, President and Chief Operating Officer of Air Lease Corporation.

Fleet Growth

Building on our base of 142 aircraft at September 30, 2012, we increased our fleet by 13 aircraft during the fourth quarter of 2012 and ended the quarter with 155 aircraft spread across a diverse and balanced customer base of 69 airlines based in 40 countries.

Debt Financing Activities

During the fourth quarter of 2012 and through February 28, 2013, the Company entered into additional debt facilities aggregating $610.5 million, which included a $450.0 million in senior unsecured notes and additional debt facilities aggregating $160.5 million. We ended the fourth quarter of 2012 with total unsecured debt outstanding of $2.6 billion. The Company’s unsecured debt as a percentage of total debt increased to 60.2% as of December 31, 2012 from 31.7% as of December 31, 2011. We ended the fourth quarter of 2012 with a conservative balance sheet with low leverage and ample available liquidity of $1.29 billion. As part of our financing strategy we will continue to focus on financing the Company on an unsecured basis.

Our financing plan remains focused on continuing to raise unsecured debt in the global bank market and through international and domestic capital markets transactions, reinvesting cash flow from operations, and to a limited extent through government guaranteed loan programs from Ex-Im Bank in support of our new Boeing aircraft deliveries.

As of December 31, 2012 and through February 28, 2013, we had established a diverse lending group consisting of 36 banks across four general types of lending facilities.