KUALA LUMPUR (Nov 3): Teleport, the logistics venture of airasia digital, expects to secure funds of between US$50 million and US$100 million by the end of this year for its expansion to add six freighters by 2023, with the aim of being listed in three years time.
Speaking at the virtual launch of Teleport's dedicated 737-800F freighter on Wednesday, Teleport chief executive officer Pete Chareonwongsak said the company is raising capital as part of its journey to becoming an independent logistics company.
“I would not call it a Series A because we are a little larger than an additional Series A but I would say the plan is all the numbers between [US$]50 [million] to [U$]100 [million] reflect the ambition to take us to the point of which in three years time, we can list the company,” he said.
Chareonwongsak noted that the idea of this strategic round, at the end of the day, is to raise enough funds so that Teleport does need to raise capital in the market again prior to its listing on the public market.
According to him, they are close to achieving their target and expect to do so before the end of this year.
Chareonwongsak disclosed that Teleport has been talking to private investors, mostly equity and venture capital-driven, due to their understanding of the potential disruptive model that Teleport is building.
“So if you think about it, Teleport is almost separating the network, the pipes from the airline operations, and so very few have ever done it. And we are doing this at scales across 20 markets in Asia and seven markets where we have people on the ground.
“We are doing this by combining 250 aircraft from AirAsia where we have six freighters, but actually we are looking [at] potentially a large A321 order book that AirAsia has — 360 plus aircraft outstanding that we could potentially look to convert a meaningful chunk of into long-term operations for us, as well as third party airlines, how do we bring them into the pipes that we are trying to connect Southeast Asia better than everybody else.
“Combine that with our fleets on the ground, we have at the last count 15,000 drivers, riders, vans etc. on the ground that we operate day-to-day delivery, door-to-door in less than 24 hours, you can kind of see the level of infrastructure that we are building over time,” he said.
On a related note, Chareonwongsak also revealed that Teleport is in discussion with Airbus for the latter to develop a new freighter version of the A321neo passenger plane.
“We are in discussion with Airbus, I'll be honest, and they have always been a big advocate of the A321, in general, to be used as a freighter for Southeast Asia specifically just because of the fact that it has a great operating cost structure and obviously it's slightly larger than the 320 series.
“For a lot of the markets that we need to reach both in range [and] in capacity, it's a great product. Would we be the launch customer? I do not know. We'll see... we are an important partner, we have a good relationship with Airbus,” he said.
Meanwhile, Teleport chief operating officer Adrian Loretz said the company will be starting with six 737-800 freighters until 2023.
“It's the first one of many to come. The plan is to absolutely expand on that fleet. We are going through the assessment now as to how many. Initially, we were planning with six but as we analyse the market more we understand that there is actually a large demand going forward.
“It is a long-term commitment so it is not what we sometimes see to benefit from short-term peaks. We believe this is a structural change in demand that we want to serve for many years to come, especially the growing delivery side of things.
“We are positive that we actually start generating additional demand across the region as well which we will also serve to the dedicated freighters as well. So it is a long-term strategy,” Loretz said.