PHOTO
Saudi Arabia’s low-cost carrier flynas has set a date for an Initial Public Offering (IPO).
According to Bloomberg, CEO Bander Almohanna has confirmed that flynas set a date later this year for its IPO, months, months after the carrier hired Goldman Sachs Group, Morgan Stanley, and Saudi Fransi Capital for a listing.
The budget airline is also eyeing an order of 30 widebody aircraft with the airline looking towards expanding its network as competition stiffens up in the Gulf aviation sector, Bloomberg reported.
The carrier has put out a request for proposal to aircraft manufacturers, CEO Bander Almohanna said on the sidelines of the Airline Economics conference in Riyadh, without specifying the details of the models under consideration, the report said.
At the conference, the airline also reported its financials for the first time, announcing a 32% annual increase in revenue to reach 6.3 billion Saudi riyals ($1.68 billion) in 2023, confirming that it has achieved annual profits since 2015, with the exception of the pandemic in 2020.
Earlier this month, flynas took delivery of the 50th aircraft out of an order for 120 A320neo aircraft from Airbus, with a value exceeding SAR32 billion.
At the time, the company announced its plans to double the fleet size after the Board of Directors approved an increase in purchase orders to 250 aircraft in line with the kingdom’s plans to accommodate 330 million passengers and to host 150 million tourists yearly by 2030.
(Writing by Bindu Rai, editing by Seban Scaria )
