Freedom Town, Kuwait, Jazeera Airways Group today held its Annual General Meeting of Shareholders at the company’s headquarters in Freedom Town, Kuwait where shareholders approved the Board’s recommendation to issue a 10% bonus shares to shareholders a profitable year.

For the year 2011, the company earned record KD10.6 million (38,1364,000 USD) in net profit with an earnings per share of 48 fils, a record KD57.8 million (207,951,000 USD) in revenue, up 36% from 2010, and a record KD14.9 million in operating profit.

Financial Year (FY) 2011 Financial Highlights:

• FY2011 revenue of KD57.8 million, up 36% from FY2010’s KD42.6 million
• FY2011 operating profit of KD14.9 million, vs. KD1.0 million in 2010
• FY2011 net profit of KD10.6 million, vs. FY2010’s net loss of KD2.8 million
• FY2011 average yield: 46%

Established in 2005, Jazeera Airways Group is a Kuwait Stock Exchange-listed company with over 12,000 shareholders.  The company has a fleet of 12 fully-owned Airbus A320s, evenly distributed between its airline business, Jazeera Airways, and its leasing-arm Sahaab Aircraft Leasing.  Sahaab has assets placed with Virgin America, SriLankan Airlines, and Jazeera Airways.

Marwan Boodai, Jazeera Airways Group Chairman  said, “The year 2011 was a record-breaking year despite the continued over capacity, the impact of political unrest on travel within our network, and an increasing fuel cost.  Jazeera Airways today has a solid network, increasing load factors, reduced cost, high aircraft utilization, in addition to an aircraft leasing arm with assets deployed across the globe, from the US to the Middle East to Asia.  Jazeera Airways Group today has a sustainable business model that has generated sustainable profitability quarter-on-quarter for six quarters in-a-row.

2011 in review:

Speaking to shareholders, Boodai gave an overview of the company’s focus areas and milestones in 2011. He said, “We had three priorities in 2011. First, building on the momentum of record-breaking returns seen in Q3 and Q4 2010. Second, successfully mitigating the impact of the political unrest on the business. And third, capturing a strong market share on the Cairo-Kuwait route that was launched in May 2011.” 

Boodai continued, “2011 was a challenging year but a record-breaking year as well for Jazeera Airways.  Our priorities for 2012 are to grow load factor while maintaining high yields and we believe we will be able to achieve this goal because we have the right network with the right capacity, the right product for our market, and a tried and tested team that has successfully navigated the company through the last two years with flying colors.”

Following the AGM, the Board held an Extraordinary General Meeting of shareholders to gain approval for amending the articles of association to take into account the change in capital resulting from the bonus share issuance.  Shareholders approved the change of the company’s capital from KD22 million to KD24.2 million by issuing 22 million ordinary shares (the bonus shares) at a nominal value of 100 fils to the share. (1,000 fils = 1 Kuwaiti Dinar).

Source: Jazeera Airways Group 

Currency Conversion: 1 Kuwait Dinar (KD) = 3.59777 US Dollars and 1 USD = 0.277950 KD