In their last report the auditors had AQZ as a going concern regarding how they were going to pay for the additional 30 aircraft that they had agreed to purchase for somewhere between $280-336m. 17 of those aircraft were scheduled for delivery in this calendar year, this $182-204m was the going concern for the auditors. This has now been remedied and debt funding has been secured through their existing financiers -ANZ - they will increase their loan facility to $117m (up $50) and extend the duration til 2028.

in addition instead of the 17 aircraft settling in 2024 it is now only likely to be 12 for a cost of somewhere between $128-140m - depends on the quality of each plane at sale point.

i think this is actually a positive as a slower feed of new aircraft will enable more time for AQZ to go through all of the steps to get them ready for service. As we saw last time that you need to do a lot of recruiting and training of pilots, aircrews and ground staff. Slowing the delivery of plans down will also enable them to pay for a larger component of them through there own cash flow generation, which I am expecting to expand over the next 2 years. It’s also beneficial, as it’s not clear yet where, or how much of a demand for these planes there is, as there is no wet lease deals with Qantas as their were for the batch bought in 2020.

Securing this funding removes the largest short term risk that the company was facing. Now it’s just about execution!