Willis Lease Finance Corporation (WLFC) reported record annual results for 2024 on March 10, 2025. The company’s net income totalled $108.6 million, more than doubling from 2023’s $40.4 million in 2023.
Pretax income was $152.6 million for the year, more than doubling from $67.1 million in 2023. The growth was largely driven by the company’s recurring lease and maintenance revenues, signalling the strength of the current aviation market demand.
Revenues, along with tax benefits related to its financing and capital structure side of the business helped drive a 23.8% increase for its cash flow from operations, totalling $284.4 million in the year.
“The company completed a series of financings and refinancing to diversify and increase its sources of funding to support the future growth of the business,” said management in the call. “In 2024, the company completed its third JOLCO financing, completed the company’s – and the industry’s – first ever engine warehouse financing for $500 million, expanded and extended its preferred equity investment with the Development Bank of Japan, and in the fourth quarter, refinanced and expanded its $500 million credit facility into a new five year $1bn revolving credit facility.”
The company’s revenues were a record $569.2 million for the year, increasing 36% on 2023. Annual lease rent revenue was up 11.8% to $238.2 million, and maintenance reserve revenue was up 60% to $213.9 million. Revenue growth outpaced total expense growth, which was up 19.9% from 2023 to $424.8 million.
Willis Lease said it was the company’s strongest ever results as a public trading company.
“In 2024, we leveraged our strong earnings to reinvest in the most in demand engines and aircraft,” said WLFC CEO Austin Willis. “Our ability to profitably deploy nearly $1bn is a direct reflection on how our platform maximises the value of our assets.”
During the call, management said the rate of lease extensions are higher than “what is has historically been”, adding: “We don’t blindly extend our assets. We take it as an opportunity to reprice. We are seeing more extensions, but are also seeing a lot of opportunity there as well.”
Willis added in the call that the company is seeing a strong market for both the whole engine asset as well as parts.
“We do see some scarcity in the market for originating transactions for a typical engine that you might buy to put on lease to third parties,” he said. “That being said, we’ve been very successful at originating ourselves. The value for assets right now makes it a little more difficult periodically to originate deals, but we’re also beneficiaries on the sell side of the market.”
He added that the company has a “very robust” pipeline for originating transactions. “We’re seeing a lot of opportunities to originate.”
The company signed a deal a week prior to its results for over 20 CFM56-7B engines on its ‘ConstantThrust’ platform, where WLFC covers the risk and cost of jet engine maintenance by replacing a removed engine with a serviceable engine from its assets. The company said it expects this deal to provide a “good return” and “significant savings” for its customers. Willis added: “It will enable us to deploy a meaningful amount of capital in a single transaction and create more feedstock of engines that we can repair in our two MROs, sell, or part out.”
The company expects ‘ConstantThrust’ to become “more and more sought after” as airlines renew their fleet into Airbus’ neo family fleet or Boeing’s MAX family fleet.
“We can actually solve a problem for the customer, and in this particular circumstance, the problem is bridging them from a maintenance standpoint,” said Willis. “We’re helping the customer to avoid shop visits where we’re insourcing that maintenance, and they’re really only paying for the incremental hours and cycles that they consume.”
The company’s long term maintenance reserve revenues were up $24 million from the $15.4 million in 2023 as it had 20 engines and aircraft assets with long term leases ending and having maintenance reserve realisations, compared to six assets in 2023. Around $175 million of its maintenance reserve revenues were short term maintenance reserves, compared to $118.3 million in 2023.
“The increase in short term maintenance reserve was influenced by our overall portfolio growth, and more specifically, the increase in the number of engines on short term lease conditions, the timing of revenue recognition of in substance fixed payments, and the systematic contractual increase in the hourly encyclical usage rates on our engine,” management said on the call.
Assets totalled $3.3bn on the balance sheet, with shareholders’ equity amounting to $549.4 million. The company’s lease portfolio, as of the end of the year, was $2.9bn. The company held $9.1 million in cash and cash equivalents.