Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to BOC Aviation Limited's 2023 final results conference call. I will now hand the session to Mr. Timothy Ross to begin today's presentation. Mr. Ross, please begin. Thanks, Ray, and welcome everybody to BOC Aviation's earnings call to discuss our final results for the year ended 31st of December, 2023. With me today are our Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Steven Townend, our Chief Operating Officer, Tom Chandler, and our Chief Financial Officer, Wu Jianguang. Please note that some of the information you'll hear today during our discussion may consist of forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from the statements made today. You should not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements, and you should review our results announcements for full details. Please also note that all currency references in today's call are in US dollars. A copy of our earnings announcement is available both via the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and in the investor section of our website at bocaviation.com, and a conference call presentation is also available in the investor section of our website. This call is being recorded and will be available for replay from our website within the next 24 hours, as is a transcript of today's discussion. I'll turn over the call to Steven Townend for his comments. Thanks, Tim, and good evening to everyone on the call. Thank you for joining us for our 2023 final results earnings call, where growth in our aircraft leasing business and recoveries related to aircraft in Russia have combined to produce a record result. We're delighted to report net profit after tax of $764 million for 2023, equivalent to earnings per share of $1.10. This compared with net profit after tax of $20 million in 2022, reflecting the Russia-related write-downs incurred that year. Adjusted for impairments and recoveries related to Russia, core net profit after tax rose to $547 million from $527 million in 2022, while net assets per share at end 2023 had risen 11% to $8.28. Our board has recommended a final dividend of $0.2721 per share, payable to shareholders of record on the 7th of June, taking the total dividend paid for the year to $0.3852 per share, an increase of 45% on the total dividend paid for 2022. This is consistent with our policy of distributing 35% of net profit after tax for the full year. As a reminder, last year's dividend was based on core net profit after tax rather than the statutory number. Our total revenues and other income rose 7% to $2.5 billion for 2023, which we ended with total assets at $24.2 billion as we increased our investment in new aircraft. For a second year, our collection rate remained over 100%, reflecting the continued receipt of airline customer payments deferred from previous periods, and this helped to lift our operating cash flow net of interest to a full year record of $1.6 billion. We finished the year with cash and undrawn committed liquidity of $5.6 billion. For the year ended December 2023, IATA expects global airline profitability to hit $23 billion. This will have been achieved on sustained growth in passenger demand, which has expanded faster than capacity and has enabled airlines to maintain fares at current levels. Passenger demand rose 37% for full year 2023, and passenger load factor of above 82% matched 2019's utilization levels. While all markets recorded double-digit demand growth, the strongest was recorded in our home markets of Asia Pacific. Passenger traffic rose by over 96% in 2023, as the region's carriers restored long-haul services and the Chinese market continued to recover. We see Asia Pacific again at the forefront of growth in 2024. Chinese international passenger capacity has now returned close to 70% of 2019 levels, and total market demand during the recent Lunar New Year exceeded the number of passengers flying in 2019 by 18%. India's continued growth should also provide further impetus. The Asia Pacific region will continue to provide plenty of both placement and financing opportunities for well-capitalized lessors such as ourselves, especially those with substantial order books. Capacity growth remains a challenge for us and our airline customers and is constraining the growth opportunities of airlines and lessors alike. This has been a multi-year problem, and today, obstacles include supply chain, lack of experienced labor, and engine availability continue to dampen rates of aircraft production. The effects of this supply-side shortage have been intensified competition for aircraft, rising lease rates, and improving valuations for both new and used aircraft. All of our 2024 lease maturities are placed or subject to sale agreements, while all of our 2024 order book deliveries have been placed at attractive rates against this backdrop. We expect to see demand for leasing remain strong over the next 12 months as airline financing requirements for new aircraft deliveries exceed $100 billion, approaching 2018's record level. Funding markets, however, have not returned fully for the airline industry, which should continue to positively affect the volume of new deliveries financed by lessors. Since we last spoke in August, the macroeconomic environment has stabilized. Singapore jet fuel has averaged $107 per barrel for the last three months, down 9% on the same period last year. While the value of the US dollar against a basket of currencies is unchanged compared to this time last year. Long-term interest rates, while down from their fourth quarter 2023 peaks, remain higher than they were this time last year, with five-year treasuries averaging 30 points higher so far in 2024. We have been successfully passing these increases on to our customers, as Tom will discuss shortly. Insurance settlements in respect of 11 aircraft in Russia contributed $217 million in net profit after tax to 2023's total, a partial recovery of the $507 million post-tax write-down for 17 aircraft that we recorded in 2022. We are encouraged by this and continue to pursue all possible avenues for further recovery. However, we are unable to provide guidance on what form this may take, when it might occur, or the value of any future settlements. During our first half review in August, we welcomed Tom as our new COO and Liu Jin as our Chairman. Towards the end of the year, we announced the retirement of our long-standing Managing Director and CEO, Robert Martin. We also announced the promotion of Wu Jianguang to Chief Financial Officer as my replacement. Our thanks go to Robert for his 25 years of leadership as we built a business that has earned cumulative net profit after tax of over $6 billion. I'll now hand the call over to Tom to speak to our operations and business development, and then Jianguang will present a more detailed review of our P&L and balance sheet. Thank you, Steven. Our operational and business development report is as follows: We delivered 67 aircraft to 11 different airline customers, of which two were purchased by the customer at delivery, giving us 65 net new aircraft deliveries for the year, the highest since 2017. We also signed a record number of lease commitments for 142 aircraft. As at end December, our total fleet stood at 684 aircraft, comprising 426 owned, 34 managed, and an order book of 224, representing committed CapEx of $12 billion. Our order book continued to grow with 95 aircraft added during 2023. This strong pipeline underpins our future growth and comprises the most popular new technology aircraft types, predominantly Airbus A320neo family and Boeing 737-8. Our committed deliveries give us an excellent baseload of CapEx each year, and are valuable positions given the supply issues that the industry faces and the high demand environment described earlier by Steven. Our new deliveries during the year were primarily narrow-body aircraft, although we also added another four Boeing 787 deliveries to our balance sheet. All of our new deliveries were fuel-efficient, latest technology aircraft and included 18 A220, as well as 10 737 and 33 A320neo family aircraft. We continue to see the impact of manufacturer delivery delays, with five aircraft that were scheduled for delivery in 2023 being delayed into 2024. Of the deliveries that did occur in 2023, a significant number occurred in the fourth quarter, delaying our revenue. We believe that supply chain and labor issues will continue to impact our OEM partners as they endeavor to increase production rates, but the delays will stabilize once the planned production rate increases are achieved. To offset the effect of delays, we've made considerable progress in sourcing replacement CapEx, and have increased committed deliveries for 2024 to 58, from the 39 that we guided towards when we last reported in August. Adding new positions to our delivery skyline has been a key focus, and of the 95 aircraft added, we delivered 48 of these in 2023, with the balance scheduled for delivery before the end of 2025. During the year, we transitioned 13 used, owned, and managed aircraft to airline customers, with only one freighter aircraft and three owned single-aisle aircraft off lease at the end of the period, two of which are already committed for onward lease. This compares with seven aircraft at the same point last year and reflects the robust demand that currently exists for the young aircraft of which our fleet comprises. The weighted average age of our owned portfolio was 4.6 years at the end of December, remaining one of the youngest in the aircraft operating leasing industry. We also continue to have one of the industry's longest weighted average remaining lease terms for our owned portfolio at 8.1 years. 77% of our fleet is latest technology, as is 100% of our order book. The average appraised value of our aircraft lease fleet was $20.6 billion, representing an 8% premium to the fleet's net book value of $19.1 billion. We sold 20 aircraft from the owned fleet in 2023, improving on 2022 levels and achieving our targets. Firmer aircraft values meant gain on sale margin improved to 10.6% from 5.1% in 2022. Lease rate factor increased to 10% from 9.2%, reflecting the effects of improved lease pricing and interest rate adjustment mechanisms in our leases. Net lease yield rose to 7.1% from 7% in 2022. This was slower than the improvement in lease rate factor, primarily explained by the higher cost of funds recorded during the period, and the delivery of 10 operating leased aircraft in Q4 2023. In terms of funding, we raised $4.1 billion in new financing, comprising $1.7 billion from the debt capital markets across a range of tenants, with a further $2.5 billion drawn from facilities with our banking group of over 50 banks. Cash flow generated from our financing and operating activities allowed us to fund our CapEx and repay $2.4 billion in maturing bonds and loans. We have $3.1 billion in debt obligations scheduled repayment in 2024, which together with our anticipated CapEx, can be funded from our cash flow and our committed liquidity of $5.6 billion. Having set ourselves new three-year ESG targets at the end of 2022 as part of our Hong Kong Stock Exchange listing requirements, we are on track to meet or exceed these. In recognition of our continuous efforts to improve our ESG performance, MSCI lifted our rating from BBB to A towards the end of the year. Our commitment to robust governance and diversity at board and management level remains unchanged, with three of our board directors and 26% of management being female. During 2023, we lifted the number of community-focused events to which our colleagues volunteered, completing 18 events as compared with 15 in 2022, split evenly between the first and second halves. In Singapore, we increased the frequency of our volunteering with Food from the Heart, continued cleaning our rivers with Waterways Watch, and maintained wheelchairs for the Red Cross. Elsewhere, our Tianjin and New York offices participated in coat donation programs, and the London and Dublin offices jointly volunteered with Save the Children. That concludes the overview of our operations and business development performance for 2023, and with that, I'll now turn it to Jianguang Wu for a deeper review of our financial performance. Thank you, Tom. As Steven mentioned earlier, we reported a net profit after tax of $764 million for 2023, equivalent earnings of $1.10 per share, and the best profit reported in our history. Total revenue was $2.5 billion and continues to be well diversified. This represented 7% increase on 2022, where Russia-related revenue is included in both years. Lease rental income rose 7% to $1.9 billion as they grew fees and thus our lease rate factor improved. Finance lease revenue increased markedly up 69% to $69 million, reflecting the almost fourfold increase in finance lease receivables to $2.5 billion. Our gains on aircraft sales of $78 million were ahead by 22% on 2022, as we beat our sales target. 20 aircraft sold in 2023. Other income rose over 220% to $317 million, primarily due to received Russian insurance settlements totaling $258 million. Interest and fee income was down $10 million to $86 million in 2023 because of lower contributions from pre-delivery payment financing. From cost perspective, our two largest expense continue to account for 90% of the total depreciation, which remains our largest expense, was largely flat at $795 million compared to 2022. Reflect the sales activities and the pace of aircraft deliveries that occurred towards the end of the year. Financing expenses, our second-largest item, rose by 32% to $636 million. This was mainly due to a high cost of debt of 4.1% per annum in 2023, compared with 3.1% previous year, and an extra $1.4 billion in gross debt as at December 2023. Excluding Russia effects, impairment of aircraft declined to $9 million, compared to last year's $65 million. Looking at the balance sheet, we ended the year with total assets $24.2 billion, funded by debt of $16.5 billion. Total equity increased to $5.7 billion, compared with $5.2 billion at the end of 2022. This is mainly attributable to a profit for the period, and partially offset by the payment of dividends amounting to $201 million. Loans and borrowings increased to $6.5 million, as we funded our fleet growth, with gross debt to equity stable at 2.9x, unchanged from December last year. Rating agencies, S&P and Fitch, both reaffirmed our A- credit rating and a stable outlook during 2023. Finally, our effective tax rate was little changed at 11.2% in 2023, compared with the 2022's rate of 11.8%, excluding effects of Russia. I will now hand the call back to Steve for his closing remarks. Thanks, Jianguang. To close, we remain grateful to our board, our staff, investors, and our other stakeholders for their ongoing support over the past year, as earnings and balance sheet growth have regained momentum. Our airline customers' financial health continues to improve on the back of strong travel demand and despite a limited supply of aircraft. This supports an environment of greater aircraft utilization and higher lease rates, allowing our business to further improve its profitability. Our increased distributions for 2023 are testament to our level of confidence in the outlook. I'm positive about 2024. The year has started strongly as we continue to see opportunities for our financing products, deliver aircraft from our order book, and evaluate further growth opportunities. Funding markets remain supportive, and falling interest rates later in 2024 should ease pressures on our leasing margins. With that, I conclude our review of the industry, our company's financials, and our outlook, and I'll pass the call back to Tim. Thanks, Steve. This wraps up management's formal conference. We now have time for Q&A, and as a fairness to others, request that each participant restricts themselves to one question and a follow-up, unless time permits for additional queries. I'll hand the call back now to the operator for the Q&A session. Thank you. We now begin the question and answer session. In the interest of time, participants are limited to one question each. If you have any follow-up question, please join the queue again. And participants with a question to pose, please press star one one on the telephone keypad, and you will be placed in a queue. To cancel the queue, please press star one one. Once again, star one one on your telephone keypad now. Our first question is from Parash, from HSBC. Your line is open. Hi, can you hear me? Please go ahead. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, Parash. Parash, hi, it's Steven. Yeah. Yes, we can hear you. Hey, Steven. Thanks for the comments. I just wanted to ask in the interest of one question. I think market was pleasantly surprised with the resolution coming with respect to your and your peers' fleet with Russia with probably a part of that payment as the same. How should we think about going into 2034, 2035? Are you hopeful of claiming most of it, or it's probably very difficult to say, and we will know when we will know? Any color on that? I think you probably mostly summed it up there, Parash, by it's very difficult to say, and we will know when we will know. You know, I think, you know, we have made good progress, and, you know, we continue to follow, you know, a number of different avenues as you are aware. We continue to talk to the airline customers about, you know, possibly getting aircraft back. We continue to talk to the insurers in Russia about possible settlements there. We continue to talk to our own insurers, and as you're aware, we will be in court with them if nothing changes later this year, along with all other major lessors. But for each of those at the moment, we don't have a definitive outcome. And so as soon as we have something, obviously we'll, we will let you know. Okay, perfect. And maybe one very quickly, sorry, Tim. With respect to order book, how is your interaction with Boeing and Airbus, and how confident you are that they will be able to deliver as promised, and that will meet your CapEx requirements? So maybe if I talk about what I expect for CapEx for this year, and then maybe Tom can talk a little bit about, you know, more specifically what we're seeing from the manufacturers. I think in terms of our CapEx for the year, you know, what we've shown already is that we've got about $2.5 billion of CapEx already committed. You know, when we talked in previous years, we talked about what a typical year would look like in terms of about $4 billion of CapEx. We got much closer to that last year than we have in recent years, and I would hope again that, you know, that's certainly our target for the year. We'd hope to be able to add the additional commitments-... On top of what we already have to to hit that. But clearly, there's challenges with both Boeing and Airbus, and so maybe, Tom, do you want to touch on that briefly? Yes, and with both OEMs, we have seen some incremental delays coming through as they have had the difficulty in different aspects of the supply chain in terms of meeting the increased production. Obviously, with the recent activity with Boeing, with the freeze in the production levels, and as they've said publicly, not currently meeting the frozen maximum level, then we are expecting some further impact from that. As naturally, if they are unable to increase production, then the targets they had will move out, and that would naturally move aircraft out. So we continue to stay very closely engaged with both OEMs to track these developments and adapt accordingly. Okay, that's very, very helpful. Thank you, gentlemen, and I'll be back in the queue. Thanks, Parash. Our next question is from Kelvin Lau from Daiwa. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Yes. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Yep, Kelvin, go ahead. Okay. Thank you. So I just got one question regarding the net lease yield trend. So I see actually 2023, we see some slight improvement. So what should we expect for this year? Would it be depending on the U.S. interest rate or not? Or in case the U.S. interest rate, the reduction will be, the cut will be factor will be delayed, will there be any impact from us? So I want to have more color on the net lease yield in the coming, maybe this year or even next, if possible. Thank you. Okay. So I think the way to think about it, Kelvin, is it's the three key things that affect it. Firstly, obviously, as you already underlined, is what happens on interest rates, because clearly the cost of financing is a key part of that. And, you know, as I said in my comments, I think we expect that we'll start to see dollar interest rates reduce in the second half of the year, and so that should give us some positive tailwind in that respect. The other two elements that factor into it are also aircraft deliveries. But clearly, the deliveries that we are now taking are in a better market than the ones that we were taking delivery of maybe two or three years ago. But also they are adjusting for current interest rate levels, and so that feeds through and starts to help. And so the more aircraft we can add, at these accretive rates, the better that becomes. The third element also for you, that you need to watch, is our aircraft sales, because obviously a big part of our sales program now, that we're in a much stronger market, is moving some of the lower yielding assets, out of the portfolio. And so it's the, it's the combination of all those three working together that should start to, to have some effect as we move through this year. Rob, it's. But also on the net lease yield, should we? Because in 2021, we have like 7.6, right? Relatively high. So, what? How long do you expect that we can return to this level? Or actually, we are entering a kind of a new normal that probably may be hovering around seven, 7.3, 7.2, something like that? Yeah. No, I think that as we see the combination of those three things happening that we talked about, you know, we should be able to get back up to those levels. The question is to how long it takes, and that, you know, I guess is driven by, as Tom talked about, you know, delays in deliveries don't help in that respect. And it'll also depend on when we start to see that movement in interest rates. But I think once we see all of those things come together, we should be able to get back up to those levels. Hmm. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks. Our next question is from Amy Chen, from Citi. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Hi, I just wanted to follow up on the net lease yield trend. You mentioned that the third factor would be aircraft sales, and we noted that, in the year of 2023, actually disposed more aircraft compared to the previous year. I'm wondering if you have, any guidance for disposals, for the year of 2024 and onwards. Thank you. Hi, Amy. So I guess if you-- The way to think about aircraft sales is perhaps less in terms of number of aircraft and more in terms of dollar amounts. The dollar value of aircraft that we sold last year was between $800 million and $900 million. You know, generally what we guide for is somewhere between, you know, from $1 billion- $1.5 billion of sales. And, you know, when we're in a stronger market, which I think we are now, you'll probably see more towards the top end of that. And so again, you know, we should start to see that feeding through into the net lease yield. Thank you. And also wanted to follow up on delivery, because we see that Boeing is actually faced with some safety issues. And And you also mentioned earlier that there's already five aircraft deliveries that have been delayed into the year of 2024. I'm wondering how much further would these Boeing issues cause delays in delivery? So the honest answer right now is we won't know until the end of the year, because as we saw all the way through 2022 and 2023, these things keep evolving. You know, I would imagine that we will still, come the end of this year, see some further deliveries that will slip into next year. I think there's an inevitability around that. But you know, we will have to replace that with the aircraft that we financed during the year as well on the other side. 'Cause if you remember, our business is both about what we've already locked in for the longer term, and then the shorter term financing that we do for airlines aircraft deliveries. And so, you know, I still think in terms of our guidance for overall CapEx for the year, we're still focused on that $4 billion number. Thank you. Our next question is from Deepak from HSBC. Your line is open. Hi, management. Are you able to hear me? Hello? Yeah, we can hear you, Deepak. Okay, great, thanks. So, my question was on the CapEx outlook of $4 billion. You have $2.5 billion already committed. So, how does this tie with the PLB transactions? Like last year was, seems to be a record year for PLB transactions, which is in leaseback. So if you could, probably provide some color on what to expect going forward. Will this kind of remain a new stream, which you will actively look not just during periods of low liquidity, but even, as a, as a business proposition when aircraft deliveries are delayed? Yeah, so I think you need to look at a couple of different things here, Deepak. So firstly, I think although we are still seeing delays, we actually anticipate that, the total value of aircraft deliveries this year across the industry will be about $100 billion, which is, you know, up on, on last year and will be up at levels that we haven't seen since 2018. And so, you know, I think that does create opportunity because the airlines need to finance those deliveries. And if you look forward beyond 2024, you know, even with the delays we're seeing, if we look forward two, three, four years, that goes up from about $100 billion, up to about $150 billion. And so, you know, that demand for financing does create opportunity. Now, you know, the way that we look at that market, we essentially have two products that we use. Fundamentally, we have the operating leaseback, and we also have our finance lease product. We are using both of those in different parts of the world. You know, particularly at the moment, what we've seen is that demand for financing is going up, but the capital markets still haven't returned, certainly to the airline industry, in the way that we saw in the last decade. So there's still, I think, a shortfall, and that's where the role, if you like, of the well-capitalized investment grade lessors like ourselves, can continue to play a role for the industry and continue to grow our businesses. You know, fundamentally, the airline industry is not an investment-grade industry, and that's, you know, where we do play that role, because the financing markets have come back very strongly for all the major lessors, much more so than they have for the airlines. Thank you. Our next question is from Mindy Gao from CLSA. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Hi, can you hear me okay? Yes, we can hear you, Mindy. Thank you for taking my question. I have a question regarding the Global Minimum Tax. I wonder, do you see any impact regarding this on the company? Or, do you expect the tax rate to increase, like, in the next couple of years? Thank you. Yeah. So this is, I guess, something that we're seeing unfold, you know, in both last year and this year, and will continue for some time. So clearly it will have an effect. If I look at where we own and book aircraft at the moment, both the U.K. and Ireland have now implemented Global Minimum Tax. It won't make a fundamental difference in the U.K., because the tax rate was already above 15%. In Ireland it will, but it's marginal because we were paying 12.5%, and we'll move up to 15% on the revenues that we generate through our Irish vehicle. Where we may see larger change going forward will be in Singapore. Singapore has, you know, announced in its budget that it will bring in Global Minimum Tax from next year. But there's still a lot of detail around it, particularly around the, the refundable investment credits that we don't have. And so I would imagine that by the time we talk about our half-year results, later this year, we'll have a better sense of, of what effect that might have on the, on the Singapore side. Thank you. There are currently no questions in queue. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone keypad now. ... And once again, if you'd like to ask question, please press star one one on your telephone keypad now. Our next question is from Jason Sum from DBS. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Hi. Sorry, can you hear me? Yes, Jason, go ahead. Hi, yeah. Thank you for the opportunity to ask questions. Just two quick questions from me. So earlier you mentioned that the funding market for airlines are still not quite as conducive as compared to pre-COVID. So I just wanted to get a sense, because you guys typically track the spreads between your cost of funding versus the airline's cost of funding. So how have you seen this spread sort of evolve over maybe the past few months or even the past year? And maybe a quick follow-up question is, I noticed that your exposure to China and Europe has fallen. You've increased your exposure to America. So wanted to get a sense of whether is this simply a function of just better opportunities, and in the Americas that you guys are capitalizing on, or is there any other reasons that are driving this, change in your exposure? Thank you. Okay. So I think firstly, you know, in terms of cost of funds, obviously that varies from one airline to another and from one region to another. But, you know, if I look at where, you know, our bonds currently trade, you know, we're trading at a spread of probably about roughly 100 basis points over Treasuries. You know, if you take your average airline, which is not an investment grade airline, then you're probably looking at it 200-300 basis points wider, in terms of where they can fund. And that's what, you know, creates the opportunity. Clearly, there's a small number of airlines that are investment grade, and therefore, the gap is much, much narrower. But that's not where we generate the fundamental part of that business. With those airlines, it tends to be much more placing our own aircraft. In terms of the geographic spread, so it's really been a consequence of what we've seen happening on a global basis. Obviously, 2020, you know, for all markets, you know, airline traffic was down dramatically. But then what we started to see as we moved through 2021 and into 2022, was that markets recovered much faster in the Americas than they did anywhere else, and then that has gradually started to spread through Europe and the Middle East. And now, we're starting to see that coming through Asia as well. And so, you know, what you've seen as a consequence over that period has been that, you know, the Americas proportion of our portfolio has grown because that was where the demand for aircraft was. Both demand for our aircraft and demand for financing their own deliveries. You know, what you're now starting to see, and, you know, you've seen it in the last, really, the last seven days here in Southeast Asia, you've seen Changi Airport declare that its traffic is now back up above 2019 levels. You saw Cathay Pacific yesterday announce really good results. And so I think, you know, as that now starts to happen, and we see that recovery in cross-border traffic around Asia, then we will see that same balance return to our portfolio, that we had previously. Great. Thank you. Okay. Operator, thank you very much. I think we'll end the call here. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for your attendance. If you have any follow-up questions, please don't hesitate to contact me, timothy.ross@bocaviation.com, and I'll come back to you directly. Thank you for everyone for joining, and we look forward to speaking to you again with our interims in August, if not before. Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.