Dubai Aerospace Enterprise has granted rent deferrals to 25 separate customers, accounting for 5% of the firm’s annual income, in the first quarter, according to a results announcement by the firm.
DAE’s Q1 revenues were down slightly at $344.2 million versus $360.0 million for the same period in 2019 and the firm granted rent deferral requests from 25 customers by April 30 this year. It said it is currently evaluating rent deferral requests from 33 customers with the aggregate rent deferral requests from these customers totals 10% of annual reported revenue.
“As we provide additional assistance to our clients who find themselves in extraordinary times, we expect the deferral amounts as a percentage of Annual Reported Revenue to increase,” said Firoz Tarapore, chief executive of DAE.
“We have not yet seen a meaningful increase in provisions related to the impact on our customers from this pandemic; we expect this to change in Q2 and Q3 2020. We have seen an increase in arrears as customers with liquidity constraints fall behind in meeting their obligations, he added.
DAE strengthened its liquidity during Q1, as of April 30, 2020, its available liquidity was in excess of US$2.8 billion, comprising of US$577 million of unrestricted cash balance and US$2.2 billion of available committed lines of credit. DAE said that 73% of its total committed lines of credit are undrawn and that it did “not need to take any incremental liquidity actions”.