Caijing Capital Market News With the steady improvement of epidemic prevention and control, plus the summer tourism market, Air China (601111. SH) wants to use the capital market to expand the size of its fleet.
On August 2, Air China disclosed its plan for fixed increase, and planned to raise 15 billion yuan to introduce 22 aircraft and supplement working capital. Among them, 10.8 billion yuan is planned to be invested for the purchase of aircraft, with a total investment of 25.653 billion yuan.
Photo source: Air China announcement
Caijing noted that the last fixed increase of Air China was back in 2016, raising no more than 12 billion yuan for the purchase of 15 Boeing B787 aircraft projects.
By the end of 2021, Air China's fleet had 746 passenger aircraft (including business aircraft), with an average age of 8.23 years. The company said that this non-public offering will help the company optimize its fleet structure, supplement its long-term transport capacity, expand its transport capacity, alleviate the pressure on daily operating funds, and reduce its asset liability ratio.
As we all know, affected by the epidemic situation, the airline company is facing greater operating pressure. According to the statistics of the Civil Aviation Administration of China, in 2021, the entire aviation industry will achieve a cumulative operating income of 752.92 billion yuan, an increase of 21.5% over the previous year; The industry lost 84.25 billion yuan, 18.71 billion yuan less than the previous year.
Recently, five major airlines have disclosed their semi annual performance forecasts. Air China estimates that the net loss in the first half of 2022 will be about 18.5 billion yuan to 21 billion yuan; In the same period, China Southern Airlines expected a net loss of 10.2 billion yuan to 12.1 billion yuan in the half year, China Eastern Airlines expected a loss of about 17 billion yuan to 19.5 billion yuan, and Lucky Airlines expected a loss of 1.92 billion yuan to 1.62 billion yuan; Spring Airlines is expected to lose 1.2 billion yuan to 1.3 billion yuan.
However, with the gradual easing of the epidemic and policy support, the domestic civil aviation industry is expected to continue to recover.
"The civil aviation market is expected to enter the stage of accelerated recovery." Air China pointed out in its announcement that since June, the number of flights has gradually increased, and the recovery speed of domestic routes is significantly higher than that of international routes.
At the same time, since the Notice of the State Council on Printing and Distributing a Package of Policies and Measures to Stabilize the Economy at the end of May 2022 pointed out that the number of international passenger flights should be increased in an orderly manner, the flight circuit breaker policy of CAAC and the immigration isolation policy of various regions have been gradually relaxed, and international flights have also shown a trend of gradual increase.
In terms of the industry, the press conference held by the Civil Aviation Administration on July 12 disclosed that the month on month growth rate of civil aviation passenger traffic in May and June was 53.2% and 82.2% respectively. On June 29, the daily passenger traffic volume of civil aviation rose again to more than 1 million person times, and the domestic passenger transport market of civil aviation showed a steady recovery trend. In terms of international routes, Air China successively resumed several international routes in July, involving Europe, Asia and other cities; China Eastern Airlines can carry out 22 international routes, including Canada, the Netherlands, France and other countries.
Against this background, several airlines, including Air China, have launched aircraft purchase plans.
On July 1, Air China disclosed that it had purchased 96 Airbus A320NEO series aircraft from Airbus. On the same day, China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines respectively disclosed that they would purchase 100 and 96 A320NEO series aircraft with delivery dates from 2024 to 2027. According to the announcement, the total transaction price of the Third Navigation Company was 37.257 billion US dollars, about 249.541 billion yuan.
"Aviation has a dual recovery logic, and the recovery trend in the next two years is determined, and the long-term prospects are optimistic." According to Guotai Jun'an Securities, the domestic passenger flow has rebounded significantly in recent days, and it is estimated that last week it has rebounded to about 65% in 2019, including 75% in 2019 at the end of July. Considering that the number of air ticket searches has increased month on month in recent days and the air ticket pre-sale has remained high, if the epidemic situation is stable, it is expected that the small peak of summer transportation will be ushered in at the beginning of August.
