DAE CEO on Strong Aircraft Demand , Geopolitical Risks

Let me just start off by asking you what what is keeping you busy, which are the biggest or or the most thriving geographies right now? I think the good thing for us is that we're seeing demand strong across all regions, some kind of more than others. And as we just heard, China International is yet to recover. But that I think is also as we just heard more of a timing issue than anything else. The the great thing is that people either need to or want to travel and that is holding up numbers really quite well for our business. And looking ahead, is it still sale and leaseback that's conscious constituting future demand or are people also interested in the new aircraft that's potentially coming online? I think for us it's all of it. So clients need sell leaseback solutions. More and more clients today are looking for finance leases. So we can do both operating and finance. And of course a lot of lessors have positions where both the OEM's are sold out and those positions are things that we can offer to our clients. So I think that the demand is quite robust across all airlines, across all aircraft types and yet rental leases have been going up. If you talk about pricing, and I wonder what the ramifications are for that on some of your customers, Are they changing the way they behave? Are they looking to perhaps lean on more older generation aircraft because of this pricing, pricing increase? Yeah, So it's all linked, right. So in the last three years, according to our estimate, about 3000 planes that otherwise would have been produced were not produced. And as a result of that, people are holding on to their older equipment because demand is still very strong. And as that happens, we see pricing going up on the valuation of the assets on the lease rentals that airlines have to pay. Airlines are in a in a very decent position in that, yes, they are paying more not just for leases, but for staff increases and supply chain and all the other things they're going through. But they're making more than all of that in the fares that they're able to pass through to the market. So we have this amazing confluence where airlines are making a lot of money and the ecosystem around that is also quite profit. Yeah, so it helps. It's interesting. I saw in an interview yesterday, Tim Clark was saying one thing he knows for sure is that prices are going to continue to rise. So that sort of backs up what you were saying. I see you do have a lot of Boeing's in your portfolio. What is your level of concern about the quality and the safety of the planes? So ultimately safety is not an issue because Boeing is kind of gearing down to make sure that everything that comes out is absolutely safe. And that's paramount, I think to them, to everybody, right. And regulators are all over it. I think from our perspective, Boeing is in a unique situation where these incidents that have happened have damaged their credibility to such an extent that it's taking them a lot longer to come back. And we we hope that they get their act together in a very measured way, but also in a very accommodative way to the marketplace so that they can do what they need to do, but they can also restore the credibility that they need to do you see the delivery delays from Boeing, an opportunity potentially for a company like yours? Not really. I mean we are a big Boeing customer. We have a multi billion dollar order with them. So we hope of course that they get everything right. I think for us, getting getting the right product out of Boeing at the right time is very important and we wish them well. Yeah, as they continue to kind of put out many fires at the same time. What about the geopolitical situation in the region right now? We covered a lot on our show and I wonder if that's had a tangible impact on your day-to-day activity. You know, surprisingly very little. So we have two geopolitical conflicts going on in the world right now. And one would have expected that that had a bigger impact on aviation. We were braced for it, but we didn't see it. So short of some very local incidents of flight, people not flying to a particular location, we're not seeing any impact on the airline side or even on our side. It's been remarkably good. So one word to describe the outlook then for the rest of this year, Strong.