Etihad Airways CEO Unpacks Big Bet on Small Jets
In a region known for flying enormous 777s and double-decker A380s, Etihad's newest star is a single-aisle jet. The Gulf carrier took delivery of its first Airbus A321LR this week, a long-range variant of a plane more typically used for short economy-focused flights.
The UAE airline is betting on the new aircraft to supercharge its network growth and broader brand revival. As Etihad CEO Antonoaldo Neves told Skift: 'Today we show the world we're back in the game, and specifically back in the premium game.'
That game involves an aircraft type already familiar to many travelers. The A321LR, an evolution of Airbus' best-selling narrowbody, is new-generation, but not exactly groundbreaking.
JetBlue took delivery of its first in 2021, while Aer Lingus, Air Transat, and SAS are among others to use the jet on short transatlantic hops. But it's the speed and scale at which Etihad is adding the A321LR – along with its distinctive three-class configuration – that is piquing industry interest.
30, Not 20, A321LRs on the Way
Speaking at a media briefing at Airbus' Finkenwerder factory in Germany, Neves left reporters scrambling for their notes. What was meant to be a tranche of 20 A321LRs became a throng of 30. Asked for clarity on the 50% increase, Neves quipped: 'You guys are reading the wrong newspaper.'
Through a mix of leased aircraft and direct orders, Etihad will now receive 30 A321LRs over the next four years. A steady flow should result in 10 deliveries by the end of 2025, followed by another 10 the next year, then five each in 2027 and 2028. From the airline's Abu Dhabi hub, the long-range jets will fly as far afield as Paris and Hanoi. Journey tim
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Associated Press
5 minutes ago
- Associated Press
Auditor seizes hundreds of thousands from cities to pay for overdue financial reports
CANTON, Miss. (AP) — Jeff Goodwin, director of the Mississippi state auditor's compliance division, was congenial while describing to Canton officials how the office has taken $352,000 of the city's revenue to pay for past-due audits – the first time Auditor Shad White has exercised this authority. 'I didn't write the law. Auditor White didn't write the law, but we're charged with enforcing it,' Goodwin said at the Canton Board of Aldermen meeting Tuesday. Canton is one of 68 local governments across Mississippi that received an auditor's letter in March, putting officials on notice of their delinquent audits. The notices went as far north as Farmington near the Tennessee line and as far south as Moss Point on the Gulf Coast. They spanned from mid-sized cities like McComb, to rural towns like Coffeeville, to tiny villages like Beauregard – a signal of widespread municipal finance concerns. This is especially true in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, during which Congress dolled out billions to local governments nationwide, necessitating more accounting, and city and town halls dealt with the fallout of a reduced labor force. Incomplete audits create a host of problems, including reducing a city's ability to borrow money and prohibiting it from drawing down federal grants. Audits are important, despite not appearing urgent, said Billy Morehead, Mississippi College accounting professor and member of the Mississippi Public Procurement Review Board. 'All of a sudden, the can's been kicked down the road and the municipality is at risk of losing a variety of funding, a lot of their federal funds, but also their credit ratings,' Morehead said. 'It could be catastrophic to some of these places.' The March letters required compliance within 30 days or the auditor would request the Mississippi Department of Revenue to divert sales tax dollars from the municipality – the estimated price of bringing the audits up to date, plus 50% of that amount the auditor is allowed to retain for its administrative cost of hiring the accounting firm and acting as a third party on the reports. Jackson has faced scrutiny for falling behind on its audits, including one for 2023 which has yet to be complete, but the capital city did not receive a noncompliance letter. The auditor's office said it focused on municipalities that are as far behind as 2022. Only Canton, a city of about 11,000 in Madison County, and Maben, a town of fewer than 1,000 in Oktibbeha County, have seen their funds diverted under this process so far. Maben's transfer totaled more than $68,000. Holly Springs, Indianola and Tchula are not far behind. The planned diversions total $1.6 million, with Indianola facing the largest threatened seizure of $675,000. That's more than half of the city's total annual sales tax revenue of about $1.1 million. Holly Springs, which has been under investigation for its management of the local electric utility, faces a sales tax diversion of $450,000, also roughly half of its annual sales tax revenue of $900,000. The auditor's office has chosen so far not divert an additional total of $900,000 from four other towns – Itta Bena, Okolona, Winona and McComb – which it said demonstrated a good faith effort to rectify their incomplete reports. WLBT reported that McComb hadn't completed an audit since 2020, and that residents 'think someone is stealing from the city,' according to a local official. Annual audit requirements were relaxed during the pandemic, Goodwin said, 'But COVID has since passed.' 'And so we're finding municipalities in circumstances where they can't borrow funds, they can't get grants, which is a jeopardy to the health, safety and welfare of the constituents,' he said. In the case of Indianola, the audit delinquency caused the city to lose federal grants, such as a half-million dollar sidewalk project from the Mississippi Department of Transportation, according to reporting by The Enterprise-Tocsin, though it found a workaround by routing the money through the school district. The auditor's office has the power to direct these diversions under a law passed in 2009. But this is the first time it has deployed this authority, assuming control of a city's funds and engaging a firm to conduct the audits. 'It's brand new, uncharted territory,' Goodwin said, 'The way the code reads, we have to estimate the fee and we have to put a 50% penalty on it. We don't want your money.' White, a Republican, has jokingly referred to his office as 'MOGE,' the Mississippi version of President Donald Trump former adviser Elon Musk's DOGE, or Department of Government Efficiency. The auditor was more rigid in his comments on the municipalities' overdue work. 'We've given cities plenty of chances to catch up on their audits,' White said in a statement to Mississippi Today. 'For the ones who have refused to get audited, their citizens deserve better, and my office will use the full extent of its legal authority to make sure the taxpayers get the transparency they deserve.' The auditor's office notably does not have the authority to audit municipalities itself, and legislators killed a 2024 proposal to permit the auditor to review and examine them. The Mississippi Department of Revenue declined multiple requests for an interview about the diversions, directing all questions to the auditor's office. Under the law, the auditor's office has the power to choose the CPA firm to complete the past-due audits, enter the contract as a third party, and pay the invoices with the diverted revenue. Canton recently retained Tann, Brown and Russ in an effort to comply. The same firm has been working on the 2019 audit for Indianola since 2024. An accountant there declined to comment about their engagement or about the challenges surrounding municipal auditing. It's difficult to find CPA firms that will conduct municipal audits, let alone one that will do it for a price some small towns are willing or able to pay. The number of students majoring in accounting has dwindled, despite an uptick in more recent years, Morehead said, and firms are still struggling to keep up with the demand. 'I know folks who are just exhausted,' Morehead said. In Tchula, one of the poorest towns in the nation on the edge of the Mississippi Delta in Holmes County, Mayor General Vann served 2017-21 and oversaw the last annual audit the town completed. He was elected again this year and took office July 1. Within a few weeks, Tchula had retained Watkins, Ward and Stafford, headquartered in West Point. 'The town finances are meager,' Vann said. 'But this is a priority and a necessity and it's something that you have to get done. And the price, you just have to bear it and come up with it. You don't have any choice.' The audits become even more difficult to complete when municipalities haven't maintained proper recordkeeping – every transaction, deposit and debit – in part because they're losing institutional knowledge inside their clerks' offices due to retirement and population loss. 'I think there's a brain drain,' Vann said. 'You have to have someone that knows how to keep a good set of books.' The auditor's office said it would be returning any unused money to the municipalities, but since the estimated cost of the audit assumes financial statements will be in a good enough shape to audit and that may not be the case, it could be unlikely there are any leftover funds. 'I do have concerns for you, each one of you,' Goodwin told the Canton officials. 'You're basing your decisions off of financial statements that will not be complete.' Alderwoman Shannon Whitehead, who was just elected in April, smiled, nodded and repeated 'right' and 'absolutely' during the presentation Tuesday. Jason Camp, a Mississippi State University extension specialist who specializes in municipal government, said in some cases, current municipal officials were not in charge when the audits fell behind, but someone has to hold them accountable for following the law. 'It does sound like the actions taken by the state auditor's office has made some urgency come into play with some of the cities who maybe didn't think it was such a big deal to be behind,' Camp said in an interview with Mississippi Today. 'They're now saying, 'Hey this is a serious issue and we have to put resources towards getting us caught up.'' ___ This story was originally published by Mississippi Today and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
Bloomberg
5 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Middle East Funds Offer a Wall Street Payday Favorite
Hi, it's Alex Dooler in Abu Dhabi and Dinesh Nair in Dubai, reporting on how a growing number of job candidates are asking Middle Eastern SWFs to offer them carried interest awards. Elsewhere, it's a sizzling summer for US IPOs. Today's top stories
Forbes
35 minutes ago
- Forbes
The $2.3 Billion Sparkle Abu Dhabi Could Have On Disney
Disney's upcoming theme park in Abu Dhabi could boost its profits by as much as $2.3 billion in its first decade of operation according to new analysis. As this author forecast in a social media post and follow up report, Disney announced in May that its next resort will be built in the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Almost instantly, it gave a glow to the media giant's stock price. The value of Disney's shares have largely been in decline since they hit a high of $201.91 in March 2021. Colossal losses at its streaming division combined with a string of costly box office duds led to Disney's stock price crashing to an almost 10-year low of $81.72 in April this year. It was even lower than it fell at the onset of the pandemic but it wasn't long before the magic returned. When Disneyland Abu Dhabi was announced on May 7, the stock price surged by 10.8% and now stands at a healthy $115.17. A staggering $18 billion was added to Disney's market capitalization on that day alone but this might just be the start. Theme parks, not movies, are the engine behind Disney's profits thanks in part to fat margins on the food, beverage, merchandise and queue-cutting passes sold there. Disney's Experiences segment, which includes its theme parks and consumer products, generated just over a third of the company's $91.4 billion revenue last year but nearly 60% of its $15.6 billion operating income. That trend hasn't stopped as Disney announced yesterday that in the third quarter of this year, Experiences was again responsible for the majority of its $4.6 billion profit and a whopping 38.4% of its $23.7 billion revenue. So why was its stock in the doldrums until its new outpost in Abu Dhabi was announced? In order to keep guests streaming through the turnstiles, theme parks need to build new attractions and that comes at a high price. Disney is currently in the midst of a $60 billion spending spree on its Experiences division involving the expansion of all of its six existing theme park resorts. Not only will it take years for these new attractions to open but it remains to be seen how many consumers will be able to afford to visit them when they do. Accordingly, the $60 billion commitment wasn't warmly received by investors as this report in July last year explained. Since then the outlook for the tourism industry hasn't significantly improved, in part due to the threat of President Trump's tariffs. In May the Airlines Reporting Corp. (ARC) announced that U.S.-based travel agency air ticket sales dropped 4% year over year in April marking the third straight month of declines and the largest decrease in 10 months. The following month, investment research firm Morningstar reported that travel booking site Expedia was experiencing softening demand in its core U.S. market amid tariff uncertainty. Major hospitality companies Hilton, Hyatt and Wyndham also cut their full-year outlooks, citing the challenging macro environment and softening consumer demand amid concerns that travelers are holding off on trips. Perhaps most worryingly, last month, the esteemed University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey hit 61.8 which was 16% below December 2024 and far less than its high of over 100 at the start of 2020. It perhaps explains why investors had been disenchanted with Disney's stock despite it posting sparkling results. In fact, almost every division of Disney's Experiences segment posted higher revenue and operating income in the third quarter of this year than they did for the same quarter last year. There was just one exception. Consumer products revenue and operating income rose by 2.9% and 0.9% respectively. Revenue at Disney's domestic parks was up 10% while their operating income surged by even more with a 22.5% increase. However, a dark cloud hung over their international counterparts in Paris, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Tokyo. Although revenue at Disney's international outposts rose 5.6% to $1.7 billion, their combined operating income declined by 3.1% to $422 million. Disneyland Abu Dhabi will change that and then some. Indeed, the transformation it will have is the reason why the Abu Dhabi announcement cast such a powerful spell on Disney's stock price despite the uncertain outlook for the tourism sector. Disney owns and operates almost all of its existing theme park resorts so it reaps all the rewards but carries all the risk and the cost of investment. The Mouse's Abu Dhabi outpost will be different as it will be built, owned and operated by government-backed Miral, which is comfortably the world's leading theme park manager outside Disney and Universal as this report explained. The magic touch this will have is that Disney will receive licensing income from the resort but won't need to foot the cost of developing or building it. It is a similar model to the one at the Tokyo Disney Resort, which is owned and operated by the Oriental Land Company (OLC), a specialist leisure venue operator listed on Japan's Nikkei stock exchange. OLC contracts Disney's Imagineering design division to develop the attractions and hotels at its two parks and the media giant also earns royalties on revenues generated by the resort. Details of the royalty rate are confidential and neither Disney nor Miral have commented on it. However, according to filings for other foreign Disney parks 'the royalty rate charged by TWDC [The Walt Disney Company] on Disney resorts outside the United States is largely the same at 5% to 10% of revenues, depending on the source of revenues (e.g. merchandise, food and beverage, admission, etc.)' This reflects comments in former Disney CEO Michael Eisner's memoir, Work in Progress, which said that the final contract for Tokyo Disney "gave Disney 5% of the gross revenues on all food and merchandise and 10% of the gross on admissions." Morningstar puts the royalty rate at 7% of total revenue on average while a 2017 report by market research firm Skift claimed ( that Disney's effective royalty rate (based on parks and hotels) averaged at 6.1% over 11 years. Taking this more conservative figure for the year to March 31, 2025 yields $269.7 million, or 2.9% of Disney's annual Experiences segment operating income. As the chart below shows, 6.1% of parks and hotels revenue brings OLC's royalties to $3.5 billion over the past 15 years giving an average of $232.6 million per year. If Abu Dhabi yields a similar sum it would give Disney $2.3 billion over a decade. Royalty deals like this typically include minimum guarantees so Disney shouldn't lose out if revenues are lower than OLC's which are generated by two parks compared to the one which has been announced for Abu Dhabi. However, The Wrap recently claimed that Disneyland Abu Dhabi is forecast to get 32 million visitors in its first year which is higher than the two parks at Tokyo Disney according to the Themed Entertainment Association's ranking of park attendance. This would comfortably make Disneyland Abu Dhabi the world's most-visited theme park which may seem fanciful as there is no precedent for it. However, Miral's ultimate objective isn't purely ticket sales as the Abu Dhabi government is developing leisure facilities, such as theme parks, to diversify its economy away from fossil fuels due to its dwindling reserves. The grander the parks are, the greater the number of visitors they attract and the more diverse Abu Dhabi's economy becomes. It is why Abu Dhabi aims to be the world's leading theme park destination and in order to take that crown it will have to attract guests from far and wide which will put its Disney outpost in competition with all of the others. To tempt tourists to Abu Dhabi, its Disney park will have to be better than all of the others which reflects the bold claim made by Disney's chief executive Bob Iger that it will be "the most technologically advanced theme park that we've ever built." It could also be why it might end up being the biggest as this author explained and, in turn, it could end up attracting more visitors than any other theme park. The more visitors the park in Abu Dhabi gets, the higher its sales will be and the higher the royalties will be. Crucially, as Disney doesn't have to spend any money on capital expenditure or park operations in Abu Dhabi, the royalties will fall straight to Disney's bottom line and turbocharge the operating income of its international parks division. This explains why Disney's stock price soared on the announcement of the new park and when its doors swing open it should make quarter on quarter operating income declines in Disney's international parks division a thing of the past. That's far from the only benefit the park could bring to Disney. "From an investment standpoint, it positions Abu Dhabi as a premier global destination capable of attracting world-class brands, which will likely catalyse additional international entertainment and hospitality investments in the region," said Josh Gilbert, market analyst at eToro, in a recent interview with Forbes Middle East. 'Having a Disney resort in the Middle East extends [Disney's] reach to a new geography, potentially boosting Disney's consumer products and media business in the region as well. It could stimulate Disney+ subscriptions, merchandise sales, and film popularity in MENA [the Middle East, and North Africa] as the park builds a local fan base.' As this author reported, the park could open as soon as 2030 so Disney stockholders may not have to wait long to get this happy ending.
