December 5, 2024
FlyExclusive is shaving its 2023 revenue forecast from $367 million to $323 million despite the second-largest gain in flight hours through October.
A vote scheduled for today by EG Acquisition Corp. on its SPAC merger with FlyExclusive has been delayed until Dec. 18, according to an SEC filing from Dec. 5.
The move will delay the IPO for the nation’s fifth-largest private jet operator as measured by charter/fractional flight hours to later this month.
FlyExclusive also posted an updated presentation to its website, cutting revenue projections and adjusting its business mix.
The revised forecast cuts 2023 total revenues from $367.3 million to $323.1 million.
Charter revenue drops from $359.4 million to $316.6 million.
MRO Revenue is being cut from $4.8 million to $3.9 million.
Revenue from fractional share sales falls from $3.0 million to $2.6 million.
Adjusted EBITDA forecasted earnings go from $32.0 million to $25.2 million in the update presentation.
The forecast for net loss increases from $11.9 to $27.6 million.
The Kinston, North Carolina-based operator is cutting revenue expectations for 2024 from $520.6 million to $496.8 million.
Charter revenue forecast drops from $495.1 million to $473.1 million.
MRO expectations drop from $9.0 million to $8.1 million.
Fractional revenues drop from $16.5 million to $15.2 million for next year.
Companies book fractional sales based on aircraft delivery, so the reduction infers possible delays in aircraft arrival.
Its first Citation CJ3+ light jets were initially expected to come at the beginning of the year. They were only delivered in October. As we have reported, OEMs and the industry continue to battle supply chain woes.
Net profit for 2024 is expected to be $6.8 million instead of $10.2 million.
EBITDA profit is expected to be down to $49.7 million instead of $53.8 million.
One change in the business mix looks to be the wholesale market.
During its Investor Day presentation in June, FlyExclusive executives said they expected that 2024 its Jet Club jet card would account for 42% of revenue, with the wholesale market at 39%.
The new projections show jet cards at 33% of revenues next year, with the wholesale market accounting for 48% of the top line.
Jet Club is expected to be 29% of revenues this year instead of 36%.
That’s still up from 24% last year, 18% in 2021, and 5% in 2020 when the jet card product was first launched.
In our recent analysis of the charter and fractional market, “How’s business for private jet operators in 2023? The answers vary,” we noted several brokers saying floating fleet operators like FlyExclusive had recently become more active chasing their business.
The data from Argus showed FlyExclusive with the industry’s second-largest gain in flight hours for the first 10 months of the year.
In the report, one broker who asked not to be named said floating fleet charter operators have more airplanes than demand on many days.
He said operators like FlyExclusive, with their own membership programs, essentially turned off the ad hoc wholesale market when demand surged.
Another broker told us, “We were at a point where our go-to operators (in 2021 and 2022) weren’t available. We were making dozens of calls to find an airplane that met our standards.”
He said the replacement operators were more expensive because of their airplanes’ locations.
During the peak demand surge, he was chartering jets based in Wisconsin and Iowa to fly clients from New York to Florida.
Those empty legs had to be factored into the client pricing.
A spokesperson for FlyExclusive declined to comment, citing the upcoming IPO.
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