CAPITAL A’s logistics arm Teleport will not be hampered by the imminent spinoff of the group’s airline assets and harbours its own IPO ambitions, chief executive officer Pete Chareonwongsak said.
Capital A is consolidating its carriers, including long-haul unit AirAsiaX, into a standalone aviation company called AirAsia Group. While Teleport contributed just 5 per cent of Capital A’s revenue, it will be the parent’s biggest unit after the restructure, and harbours its own plans to eventually list, Chareonwongsak said.
Key to that is rapidly increasing Teleport’s parcel delivery capacity to two million packages a day by the end of 2025 – more than 10 times its current level, he said.
The unit has raised about US$40 million to date, which will be used to fund the expansion, and it will probably take a couple of quarters after the restructure for investors to see Teleport’s business model hasn’t changed much, he added.
“We always operated a very arm’s length business, we have been funded independently, and we continue to grow on top of AirAsia’s growth,” Chareonwongsak said.
Teleport is looking to add seven air freighters to its fleet to achieve its 2025 goals, either by operating third-party freighters or its own, he said. It currently has three of its own freighters, and Chareonwongsak said the company can easily add extra planes of its own within the next 18 months due to an oversupply in the freighter market.
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“It’s actually very easy to get freighters, either A321, A320, A330s or any variants,” he said. “Getting seven new ones is the easy part, the hard part is how to pay for them.”
Rather than raise more funding, Teleport is relying on its current asset-light model to meet to its goal – filling up unused air-freight capacity by consolidating demand from multiple partners. If it can meet its target, Teleport could be looking at a 30 per cent market share in South-east Asia’s estimated US$3 billion air e-commerce industry, Chareonwongsak said.
The unit reported revenue of RM223 million (S$64 million) in the fourth quarter of 2023, a fraction of the RM4.6 billion Capital A’s airline business generated. Still, Chareonwongsak said Teleport can “in time” produce those kind of revenue numbers and eventually list in its own right. BLOOMBERG
