Dubai: Emirates, Dubai’s flagship airline, may issue bonds early next year to help raise $4.5 billion for 21 new plane deliveries in the financial year starting April 2014, a senior company official said on Tuesday.
Brian Jeffery, senior vice president for corporate treasury at the airline, said an Islamic or conventional bond issue might happen as early as January or February next year if market conditions were feasible.
“We have pretty much the same strategy for the next financial year as this year. It’s going to be a diversified structure,” Brian Jeffery, senior vice president for corporate treasury at Emirates said in an interview.
It has to raise $22 billion over the next four years to finance its aircraft deliveries, an average of $5.5 billion a year.
Emirates, one of the world’s fastest-growing airlines, has been diversifying its funding to expand its fleet to compete with regional peers such as Etihad Airways and Qatar Airways.
The airline has witnessed rapid growth as passenger traffic at its home base in Dubai surges on the back of an economic recovery. Dubai has one of the busiest airports in the world with over 32 million passengers passing through it in the first half of 2013, up 17 per cent year-on-year.
Emirates is looking at various financing options to raise the money it needs, including bond issues, operating leases, US export credit facilities and financing leases, Jeffrey said.
Any bond sale was likely to happen after the airline reports its half-year results in November, he said.
