American Airlines Group, the parent company of American Airlines (A1G) (AAL), reduced its outstanding debt by $2.8 billion.
The American air carrier announced having fully repaid $2.8 billion of its revolving loans which the company borrowed in April 2020 aiming to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 virus on its business stability. The company repaid the loans following “three separate revolving credit facilities in a liquidity-neutral transaction,“ read the group’s statement.
After repaying loans under various revolving credit facilities, a total outstanding American Airlines (A1G) (AAL) debt was reduced by $2.8 billion. However, the company stated that its total available liquidity, including cash, remains unchanged.
“The revolving credit facilities are supported by 18 lending institutions. American is able to draw upon the revolving commitments again or leave them undrawn as needed upon the terms of the underlying credit agreements until such commitments expire, substantially all of which is currently scheduled to occur in October 2024,” read the statement.
“Since the beginning of the pandemic, American has had incredible support from the public markets and all of our banking partners,” the group‘s Chief Financial Officer Derek Kerr was quoted in the company‘s announcement.
“Our industry still has a long way to go until we are well, but we have now raised enough additional liquidity that we are comfortable repaying this debt. We are grateful to our banking partners for their ongoing support and we remain committed to rewarding their confidence in American with solid returns on their investments,“ Kerr added.
According to the American Airlines Group financial report, the company entered 2021 with $6.9 billion of unrestricted cash and investments. Besides, the group reported having $7.4 billion of additional borrowing capacity, mainly from the government loan commitment. However, to cover the cash burn it suffered due to a harsh drop in air travel demand, the company had $32.6 billion of debt and finance leases on its balance sheet, up from $24.3 billion in the pre-pandemic year 2019.