Fernandes says the investment holding group that is involved in aviation, logistics, lifestyle, and financial services ventures, planned to submit its finalised regularisation plan to Bursa Malaysia next month.
KUALA LUMPUR: Capital A Bhd
is optimistic about its growth potential this year following a strong rebound in travel demand post-Covid and expects to be out of the PN17 status by the end of the year, says chief executive officer Tan Sri Tony Fernandes.
He said the investment holding group that is involved in aviation, logistics, lifestyle, and financial services ventures, planned to submit its finalised regularisation plan to Bursa Malaysia next month.
“We can be out of PN17 definitely this year, I hope much earlier (than that). All of the consultants are now going through all the work.
“We hope to submit to Bursa between February and April. So once we get the approval, then we will go through,” he told reporters on the sidelines of the AirAsia Super App rider and driver appreciation event yesterday, Bernama reported.
To recap, Capital A fell into the PN17 list of Bursa Malaysia – a categorisation for distressed entities, in January 2022.
The group previously announced that there was no plan for a merger between its two airlines entities, AirAsia Bhd and AirAsia X Bhd, but a separate publicly-quoted aviation group would be formed under the proposed PN17 exit strategy.
Commenting on travel demand especially from China following the reopening of its border, Fernandes said the group anticipated a very strong recovery for the market in view of the overwhelming demand it received from the Chinese tourists.
“We have not started selling in full because we’re applying for all the rights but we have applied for 19 destinations compared with the 24 destinations we had pre-Covid.
“The demand is there. Obviously, flights are very expensive so we think many people will come to South-East Asia,” he said.
He expressed hoped that the governments would not overreact to the latest Covid variant as it is less dangerous, saying that like everywhere else, the surge in China would likely be over soon.
According to Fernandes, his main focus currently is getting all the planes to fly again and expects to be on par with the pre-Covid level by July for all markets, not just China.
He said the airline business would be running with 204 planes by May compared with 150 planes, and there will be no new delivery taking place this year. There will be 50 new deliveries in 2024.
