SEPANG, 5 August 2021 - AirAsia Group Berhad (AAGB) today announces it has received gross proceeds of US$ 56.83 million (MYR 239.98 million) from the merger between Fly Leasing Limited (Fly Leasing) and Carlyle Aviation Partners.
Prior to the completion of the merger between Fly Leasing and Carlyle Aviation Partners, AAGB held 3,333,333 shares of Fly Leasing, representing approximately 10.94% of common shares in the company.
The Fly Leasing shares were acquired by AAGB on 30 August 2018 as part of a cash-in-kind consideration for the earlier divestment of AAGB’s aircrafts leasing operations undertaken by Asia Aviation Capital Limited to entities managed by BBAM Limited Partnership.
AirAsia Group CEO, Tony Fernandes said: "Our plan to raise up to MYR 2.5 billion ringgit through a combination of borrowing and equity raising is on track. This transaction delivers a welcome boost to our overall fundraising strategy.
“We have already raised MYR 336.5 million from two tranches of private placements earlier this year and continue to renegotiate leasing terms with all of our lessors. We have also disposed of 32.67% of our interest in AirAsia India, amounting to USD 37.68 million (approximately RM152.64 million), ceased operations in Japan and sold a number of spare engines amounting to over USD130 million.
“There are a number of other fundraising initiatives in place to ensure sufficient liquidity for the Group, which are well progressed. We are in the process of finalising a Danajamin PRIHATIN Guarantee Scheme loan, working on a data backed loan of up to USD350 million and preparing for a rights issue of up to RM1.02 billion which has a target completion in December.
“We remain optimistic about our ability to not only survive the ongoing effects of the pandemic, but to return to the skies stronger than ever in the near future. Domestic air travel is likely to gradually resume in the third quarter 2021 and international travel should start to take flight in 2022. We foresee a major resurgence in air travel on the horizon due to huge pent up demand and the acceleration of vaccines, better testing, education, tracing and the push for digital health passports in all of our key markets.
“Our digital transformation strategy to become more than just an airline is gaining strong momentum across all of our non airline businesses. ”
AirAsia Group has also recently completed the acquisition of Gojek’s Thailand operations to expedite the airasia Super App roll out across Asean.
Further updates on AirAsia’s fundraising strategy will be announced, in due course.