Air Lease rises after affirming growth plans amid earnings gain

Air Lease Corp., the jet-leasing company led by Steven Udvar-Hazy, surged the most since selling shares in April after the company topped earnings estimates and affirmed expansion plans.

Air Lease’s second-quarter net income of 8 cents a share topped the 6-cent average from analysts surveyed by Bloomberg, while sales of $74.3 million outpaced estimates of $72.1 million. The company added 16 planes in the second quarter, bringing its fleet to 65, and Air Lease said in a statement yesterday that it expects to have about 100 planes by year-end.

“The current availability of new aircraft from all lessors is still insufficient to satisfy demand over the next five years,” Udvar-Hazy said yesterday on a conference call with analysts and investors.

“Even if economic conditions drive airlines to cancel or defer as much as 5 percent of their firm orders during this time period, and those cancellations and deferments add to total new aircraft availability, Air Lease Corp. believes that the total demand still outstrips total supply,” he said.

Air Lease has signed letters of intent to purchase as many as 83 new planes from Airbus SAS, Boeing Co. and Embraer SA to be delivered between 2012 and 2020. The company currently leases to 43 airlines in 26 countries.

Air Lease rose $1.26, or 5.9 percent, to $22.56 at 12:41 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading, after gaining 16 percent, the largest intraday increase since the shares began trading April 19.

Air Lease posted income of $7.02 million in the three months through June, compared with a loss of $41.1 million, or $2.37 a share, a year earlier, the company said in yesterday’s statement.

-