WLFC Willis Lease Finance Corp.
$43.05
Willis Lease Finance Corp. Q3 F2026 Earnings Call Transcript
AI Conference Call Analysis
Sign in or subscribe to read.spk05
Unidentified Speaker
We would like to remind you that during this conference call, management will be making forward-looking statements, including statements regarding our expectations related to financial guidance, outlook for the company, and our expected investment and growth initiatives. Please note these forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and assumptions, which are subject to risk and uncertainties. These statements reflect WLFC's views only as of today They should not be relied upon as representative of views as of any subsequent date and WLFC undertakes no obligation to revise or publicly release the results of any revision to these forward-looking statements in the light of new information or future events. These statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. For further discussion of the material risk and other important factors that could affect WLFC's financial results, please refer to its filings with the SEC including, without limitation, WLFC's most recent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, annual report on Form 10-K, and other periodic reports, which are available on the Investor Relations section of WLFC's website. at https colon forward slash forward slash www.wlfc.global forward slash investor hyphen relations.
Austin Willis
Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, operator, and thank you all for joining us today to discuss Willis Lease Finance Corporation's third quarter 2026 financial results. On our call today, I'm joined by Scott Flaherty, our chief financial officer. I'm pleased to announce another great quarter. We continue to deliver on our strategy to expand our platform with services, managed capital, and balance sheet investment. We grew our assets under management by 10% quarter over quarter and our on balance sheet portfolio by 12% quarter over quarter. This was due in large part to the closing on the purchase of the WNG aircraft and engine leasing entities. Our results reflect the strength of our core leasing business. As we add assets to the balance sheet, it has a clear, direct, and positive impact to our earnings. By growing Willis Aviation Capital, we are investing in the future, driving long-term fees, carried interest, and asset growth to run through our services businesses. We continue to be selective in the types of transactions that we pursue. As we originate aircraft and engine investment opportunities, we allocate them across our different pools of capital, namely on our balance sheet and Willis Aviation Capital, which encompasses our two discretionary funds and our joint venture with Mitsui and CASC in China. As we deploy capital into our different funds, we will see slower growth on our balance sheet for a period of time. Now that the seeding phase of our fund strategy is complete, we can focus more directly on building up our balance sheet, which you can see from our Q3 results reacts favorably to even modest amounts of growth. In Q3, we took several meaningful steps forward. Beyond expanding our aircraft and engine portfolio, we announced plans to replicate our proven engine repair center model in Asia. Building on the success of our operations in the UK and in the US, we also advanced plans to expand our operations in South Florida with the acquisition of a new facility that will house and consolidate our parts business, WASI, and our MRO, WorkUS, establish a new corporate headquarters, and provide a controlled environment for storing and maintaining engines. I will recap these updates in greater detail shortly. We are making these investments against a backdrop of strong underlying demand for our assets and services supported by persistent engine supply constraints and growing aftermarket maintenance requirements. Financially, we ended the quarter with about $4.9 billion in assets under management. increasing this from roughly $3.7 billion in Q3 2025 and $4.4 billion in Q2 2026. For the first time, we surpassed $3 billion in our on-balance sheet portfolio. For the quarter, we delivered earnings before tax of $19 million and adjusted EBITDA of $101 million. I'd also like to highlight our contribution margin. A key indicator of the strength of the leasing business. Contribution margin is defined as lease rent revenue and interest income, less interest expense and depreciation and amortization of assets held for lease. In Q3, it exceeded $25 million, representing 18% year-over-year growth and a record quarterly high. This is driven largely by balance sheet growth. and it should be noted that some of this may be temporarily reversed as we take a selection of these assets we just purchased and move them from held for sale into Willis Aviation Capital. Scott will provide more details in a few minutes. Before turning to our individual business segments, I'd like to spend a few minutes discussing market dynamics. Fuel prices, high interest rates and geopolitical risks are challenging the aviation sector, yet we continue to see strong demand for our products and services. Having come back from a regional tour of Asia in late August, two things are clear. High fuel prices are influencing operators regionally, and the growth that the region is experiencing is profound. Based on our conversations with numerous airlines over the past few months, We aren't seeing a meaningful increase in retirements, but there is discussion about parking some aircraft. By and large, these are older, less fuel efficient aircraft. You can see from our results that short-term maintenance reserves have decreased since April 2026. This is partially driven by macro events that have resulted in less flying, but it is also a byproduct of modernizing our fleet. which is now nearly 60% modern technology like LEAP, GTF, and GENX engine platforms versus 54% one year ago. Should high fuel prices and other factors continue to pressure airlines, we remain exceptionally well positioned to help provide liquidity to those airlines looking to shore up their balance sheets and to provide constant thrust type solutions to airlines who would rather opt to lease in temporarily rather than pay expensive shop visits during times of tight liquidity. Speaking of liquidity, we have a great deal of dry powder ready to deploy through our balance sheet and Willis Aviation Capital. Now let me turn to the Willis platform and our primary business segments, leasing, Willis Aviation Capital, and services. Starting with leasing, Our leasing business is performing well as we have been focusing on reallocating assets to different pools of capital to execute our growth strategy across our balance sheet business and Willis Aviation Capital. We saw solid utilization of our lease portfolio in Q3, averaging about 83%. In August, we announced the acquisition of 12 commercial aircraft and 13 aircraft engines. This is a significant expansion of our portfolio that puts capital to work in assets fitting well within our existing business and reflects our continued focus on discipline growth and long-term value creation. Next, Willis Aviation Capital grew to over $1.5 billion in Q3 2026. As we stand today, We have roughly $1 billion of additional capital ready to deploy through our discretionary funds, which is in addition to the capital raised by our joint ventures and Willis Aviation capital structure. This liquidity along with the undrawn revolver capacity and our low net leverage provides added flexibility that will allow us to execute our growth strategy. This model can meaningfully increase the scale of the Willis platform over time while generating additional asset management and services revenue. I'd like to point you to slide nine in our investor presentation, which shows our income from investments and fee-related earnings. When you combine these two elements, you can see the return on equity that we generate by managing third-party capital is significant. And this is going to be a key driver for us as we grow. Finally, services. With industry maintenance capacity constrained and shop visits taking longer, our services businesses continue to be a major strategic advantage and value creator for our own assets and those we manage. Just before our Q2 earnings call, we announced a long-term engine storage agreement with Pratt & Whitney to provide storage and lease return services for PW1100, PW1500, PW1900, PW4000, and V2500 engines. WLSC will support Pratt & Whitney's growing aftermarket storage requirements from its Florida, UK, and Malaysia facilities. Another exciting update from the third quarter was the purchase of land to build a new Willis Engine Repair Center, or WORC, in Malaysia. This is our third work facility globally and our first in Asia. And like our facilities in Florida and the UK, it will provide maintenance, repair, and storage services for our engine portfolio and third-party assets. Critically, this new facility allows us to get closer to our customers and partners across the Asia Pacific and will support our long-term growth across the region. As I mentioned earlier in my remarks, I recently spent two weeks traveling around Asia, meeting customers, partners, and other stakeholders. And a large takeaway was the level of activity and long-term confidence in aviation across the region. To one of the world's fastest-growing aviation markets, and as demand for engine maintenance continues to accelerate, we're confident that WorkMalaysia will position Willis to capitalize on this long-term growth. Our investment in the APAC region demonstrates the global scale of our ambition. And in Q3, we made similarly important investment in infrastructure here in South Florida with the purchase and sale agreement for a new campus that will bring our headquarters, spare parts business, maintenance and repair operations, and engine storage together under one roof. This is not only a reflection of our expanded operational footprint, but it will increase operational efficiency, promote faster decision-making process, support future customer demand and bring our people closer together. South Florida has been an excellent home for our business and we're proud to continue growing within the region. And to support further expansion of our global services platform, in September, we entered into a $35 million preferred stock purchase agreement with the Development Bank of Japan for our Series B preferred stock, taking us to 100 million total in Series B preferred stock. This builds on our long-term partnership with DBJ and further diversifies the sources of capital to support growth. Finally, we recently announced an increase in our quarterly dividend to 15 cents per share, reflecting a 12.8% increase from our prior August distribution. and our long-term confidence in our business. We also announced that the board has approved the renewal and increase of our share repurchase program under which the company may repurchase its common stock for an aggregate purchase price of up to 200 million through December 31st, 2031. While we do not have immediate plans to repurchase shares, we want the flexibility to act should the right opportunity present itself. As I've stated before, we view ourselves as a growth stock with numerous attractive opportunities to deploy capital. At the same time, we continue to evaluate ways to return capital to shareholders, including through accretive share repurchases that can deliver premium returns. Overall, we have achieved another solid quarter, and we are confident in the progress we are making to scale our global platform, expand our portfolio, and deliver long-term value for our shareholders. With significant capital to deploy into attractive aviation assets and with strong demand across both our leasing and maintenance services, we believe WLFC is well positioned for the next phase of growth. With that, I would like to hand it over to Scott Flaherty, our CFO, to discuss our financial performance in greater depth.
Scott Flaherty
Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, Austin, and good morning all. Q3 was a solid quarter for Willis Lease, producing multiple records for the business, from core lease rent revenues through income received from our many investments. As we focused the first half of the year on staging and seeding our funds and joint ventures, we have now shifted to growth across the platform. The third quarter's record $246.3 million of revenues produced $18.8 million of earnings before tax, or EBT. 10.2 million of net income attributable to common shareholders and 47 cents of diluted earnings per share as well as 100.9 million of adjusted EBITDA. Walking through the P&L, our quarterly top line was driven by record lease rent revenues of 84.4 million in the quarter. Lease rent revenues were up 10.2% year over year. Growth in lease rent revenues was driven by an increase in balance sheet portfolio up 14.2% from Q3 2025, measured as equipment held for operating lease, maintenance rates, notes receivable, and investment and sales type leases, which at the end of the third quarter was 3.3 billion in book value. Strength in lease rates as our average lease rate kicked up from 1.04 to 1.06% in the comparable year-over-year periods, all of which was slightly offset by average utilization, which was down from 86% in Q3 of 25 to 83.2% in Q3 of 26. Maintenance reserve revenues for the quarter were 39.3 million, down from 76.1 million in the prior comparable period. The majority of that decline was due to lower long-term maintenance reserves, which is associated with engines coming off long-term leases. This was $2.6 million in the current quarter compared to $29.5 million as we only recognize long-term maintenance reserves on three engines in the third quarter of 2026. $36.8 million of these revenues were short-term maintenance reserves as compared to $46.6 million in the third quarter of 2025. Short-term maintenance reserve revenues are a proxy for both the number of engines that we have on short-term lease conditions as well as the operating tempo of these engines. New tech engines, which make up a larger percentage of our portfolio, approximately 60% today, tend to be on long-term lease conditions. So despite the fact that we receive maintenance reserve cash flows for the monthly utilization of these assets, we do not recognize the revenues generally until the end of lease. Looking at the long-term maintenance reserve cash receipts year-to-date 2026, we see that they are up 72% to $27.8 million compared to the first nine months of 2025. Although this does not immediately hit our P&L, they provide significant cash flow to the business and are reflective of our growth in the new tech equipment. Spare parts and equipment sales were $98.1 million in the quarter. compared to $5.4 million in the comparable period in 2025. Spare parts sales were $9.1 million in Q3 26, up 67.8% from $5.4 million in the comparable prior quarter. Gross margins on spare parts were 10%. Sales in the consolidated P&L do not reflect 3.5 million of intercompany sales that are transacted at cost and eliminated in consolidation, providing incremental value to the consolidated business and our lease portfolio. Equipment sales in the third quarter of 2026 were 89.1 million, whereas there were no such sales in the prior comparable period. These Q3 2026 revenues primarily reflect The sale of five aircraft recently acquired to our Willis Mitsui joint venture where the company effectively warehouse these assets to affect the sale. Also included in these sales were two engines and one airframe. The trading profit on sale of this equipment was $6.2 million, representing a 7% gross margin. Gain on sale of lease equipment A net revenue metric was $5.5 million in the third quarter, resulting from the sale of eight engines as well as other equipment, compared to $16.1 million in the comparable prior period. Q3 gains on sale represented a 17% gross margin on $32.1 million of gross sales. Gain on sale was lighter than the gains in the preceding quarter as Q2 was influenced by the seeding of our leasing fund portfolio. Maintenance services revenue, which represents engine and aircraft storage and repair service, and revenues related to management of fixed based operator services increased by 7.6 million or 208.5% to 11.2 million in the third quarter of 2026. This growth was predominantly related to growth in engine and aircraft storage and repair services. Gross margin was a negative 1.7 million for the quarter. Our maintenance services offerings enhance our ability to provide a differentiated offering and program solution to our customer base. Intercompany revenue for maintenance services are eliminated in consolidation and therefore not reflected in our P&L, but continue to increase the profitability of our owned and managed assets. Management and advisory fees, the fees generated through our asset management efforts, were $4.5 million in the quarter, up 140%. On the expense side of the equation, depreciation and amortization expense increased by 2.7 million or 9% to 31.4 million in Q3, 2026. The increase is primarily due to an increase in the size of our lease portfolio and the timing of placing acquired engines on lease. Write down of equipment was 4.5 million in the third quarter, reflecting the impairment of three engines. These asset write downs are generally associated with the evaluation of engines post lease return. G&A expenses decreased by $0.5 million to $48.7 million in the third quarter. The decrease was primarily driven by a reduction in personnel costs and expenses related to the Ceased Sustainable Aviation Fuel Project, partially offset by increased outside professional and insurance costs. Technical expense increased by $5.1 million. Thank you for joining us. decreased $4.3 million or 11.7% to $32.8 million in the quarter. The decrease was primarily attributable to $2.4 million of lower costs associated with debt extinguishment as we had effectively completed the pay down of our West 7 financing and a lower overall weighted average cost of debt capital slightly offset by increased total leverage. Income from operations was $11.5 million compared to $38 million in the prior comparable period. Income from investments was $7.3 million, up $2.1 million or 41% from the prior period. This income was driven by growth contributions from our Willis-Mitsui joint venture as well as our other asset management businesses and slightly offset by declines through our smaller China-based joint venture. When we analyze our year-to-date income from investments and fund management and advisory fees and compare that to our 2026 average balance sheet investments, we can see that these initiatives have generated a 32% ROI. Earnings before tax, or EBT, of 18.8 million for the quarter as compared to EBT of 43.2 million for the prior comparable period. Income tax expense, was 7.1 million for the quarter, reflecting a 38% effective tax rate. Our third quarter effective tax rate includes a one-time charge of approximately 0.6 million, or three percentage points, reflecting the impact of Florida's 2026 legislative decision not to adopt certain federal tax law changes under the one big beautiful bill and the resulting updates to our current and deferred tax estimates. As this adjustment relates to prior year tax positions, we do not expect it to recur. We would expect that our year-to-date 28% ETR to be the best estimate for a full year ETR. The company produced 10.2 million of net income attributable to common shareholders, which factors in gap taxes, net income attributable to our non-controlling interests, and the cost of our preferred equity. Deluded weighted average income per share was 47 cents in the third quarter of 2026. Adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter of 2026 was 100.9 million. We believe that our adjusted EBITDA reflects the normalized cash flow generation capability of the Willis enterprise. Our adjusted EBITDA makes adjustments to our net income attributable to common shareholders for income tax expense, interest expense, preferred stock dividends and costs, the loss on debt extinguishment, depreciation and amortization expense, stock-based compensation expense, write-down of equipment, acquisition, financing, and divestitures-related expenses, and other discrete gains and expenses. Net cash provided by operating activities year-to-date was $239 million, up 14% compared to Q3 year-to-date 2025. Fluxes with the prior period predominantly related to changes in net income, net of tax effects, the cash tax effects, losses on debt extinguishment, the non-cash effects of impairment on equipment, the prior year gain on sale of our Wham-O business to Willis Mitsui, and a period over period $44 million increase in cash provided by changes in assets and liabilities. On the financing and capital structure side of the business, the company in July affected a three-for-one common stock split affected July 21, 2026 to provide for more liquidity in our common shares. On September 29th, we closed the private placement of $35 million of Series B preferred stock with our partner, the Development Bank of Japan, increasing their power investment in our preferred shares to $100 million. The incremental $35 million investment carries an 8.09% dividend. On October 28th, the Board of Directors approved the expansion and extension of our share repurchase program. The program was increased to $200 million in total size and extended through December 31st, 2031. In August, we paid our ninth consecutive regular quarterly dividend, which was 13.3 cents per share. Subsequent to quarter end, our board of director has declared our 10th consecutive recurring quarterly dividend at a rate of 15 cents per share, reflecting a 12.8% increase from our prior dividend. This dividend will be payable on November 25 to holders at November 16, 2026. A recurring dividend provides shareholders with a moderate current cash yield on their investment while not degrading the strong cash flow of our business and speaks to the health of the business and its underlying cash flow generation. With respect to leverage as defined as total debt obligations, net of cash and restricted cash to equity inclusive of preferred stock, our leverage was 2.88 times at the end of the third quarter of 2026. Our leverage and capital availability across the entire Willis platform provides us the flexibility to access market opportunities as they become available. With that, I will hand the call back to Austin.
Austin Willis
Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Scott. As you can see, we are delivering on our strategy to supplement our on-balance sheet leasing business with asset management. While this strategy moderates on-balance sheet growth as we deploy third-party capital, it is consistent with our long-term strategy, and we expect it to ultimately deliver premium returns. With that, I'd like to open up the call for Q&A.
spk04
Conference Call Operator
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question at this time, please signal by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Once again, star 1 for questions. We'll take our first question from Angelina Chow with Deutsche Bank.
Angelina Chow
Analyst, Deutsche Bank
Good morning. This is Angelina Chow. I'm for Shannon. Thanks for taking my question. So my first question is, this quarter saw a solid increase in lease revenue. What are you seeing in terms of demand across your engine portfolio by engine types?
Austin Willis
Chief Executive Officer
Thanks, Angelina. We're seeing pretty consistent demand across our portfolio, both in the Thank you for joining us today. Lease rates have remained on average pretty flat for the majority of the year for most of the engine types, with some going up a little bit and some going down a little bit.
Angelina Chow
Analyst, Deutsche Bank
Got it. Thank you. And I have another question. So you called out focusing on growing the Willis platform, including your balance sheet, and with remaining capital available across the Liberty Mutual and Blackstone strategies, How should we think about the pace of deployment from here and the mix of incremental asset growth between the balance sheet and the managed third-party capital? Thank you.
Austin Willis
Chief Executive Officer
Sure. Sure. So we have in round terms about $3 billion in capital that we can deploy or dry powder, so to speak. We tend to think about our origination opportunities in terms of a third, a third, a third. We try to Allocate about a third between our joint ventures, a third between our fund with Blackstone, and a third on balance sheet. The first half of the year, we really focused on seeding the Blackstone and Liberty Mutual funds. So that was both trying to originate from the market, but also taking assets from our own balance sheet and putting them into those funds. that slowed our pace of growth on balance sheet somewhat while we did that. We've done the majority of that seeding now. So as we originate, it's going to have a more direct impact to our on balance sheet growth as we also grow the other pockets of capital as well. And that's sort of what I was trying to allude to in my prepared remarks.
spk04
Conference Call Operator
Got it. Thank you.
Austin Willis
Chief Executive Officer
You bet.
spk04
Conference Call Operator
We will take our next question from Will Waller with M3S.
Will Waller
Analyst, M3S
Hi, great quarter operationally. From my perspective, this is probably one of the strongest quarters I've seen in the history of Willis Lease, so great job. On the maintenance reserve liability in the pressure lease, you discussed the timing of recognition of long-term maintenance reserve revenue. I tracked the build of that through the balance sheet liability, which increased to $201.7 million at September 30th. up from 129.3 million at June 30th. I don't recall ever seeing a growth of that magnitude while only $2.6 million was recognized as long-term maintenance revenue during the quarter. Could you walk us through kind of the primary drivers of that liability increase and specifically how much of that came from net collections of reimbursable reserves versus any amounts that were assumed in acquisitions or other portfolio activity.
Austin Willis
Chief Executive Officer
So I will just say one quick thing and then I'll hand it over to Scott. We did have the highest number of lease extensions in the third quarter that we saw in over a year and higher than, you know, 2026 to date has been higher than 2025, but a little bit lower than 24. And as you know, lease extensions do play a role in RevRec with respect to long-term reserves. So I wanted to quickly mention that, but I'll hand it over to Scott, who's going to be able to give you a more concise answer.
Scott Flaherty
Chief Financial Officer
Sure. Thanks, Austin. And thanks, Will. Thanks for the comments on the quarter. So, yeah, you're talking about a couple things, Will, that have happened. Obviously, we were acquisitive in the quarter, and Austin, I think, discussed the WNG transaction. So some of the assets we brought over did come with reserves, right? So that's going to adjust, that will have an effect on our pro forma balance sheet. But then, and you'll see this when we come out later today with our 10Q, then if you just look on our cash flow statement and you look at the net cash provided by maintenance reserves, right? And the maintenance reserves are going to be associated with those long-term, with the long-term leases was $27.8 million compared to year-to-date compared to 16.2 million year-to-date in the prior year. So what we are seeing, right, is that shift, or the mix shift slightly to newer tech assets, which tend to be on a longer-term lease, and whereas you might not see that in the P&L, long-term MR, you definitely see it on a cash basis.
Will Waller
Analyst, M3S
Okay, that makes sense. And Austin, you mentioned that the kind of lease extension rate, you know, is a bit elevated. Do you guys have any sense of, you know, what percentage of long-term leases are being extended that would then obviously defer the recognition of some of that maintenance reserve revenue on the long-term leases?
Austin Willis
Chief Executive Officer
I don't have those numbers handy right now, but I will say that generally speaking, the lease extensions were I'd say 10% to 15% higher than they had been in previous quarters. And I wouldn't attribute that to anything in particular other than just the normal fluctuations in our business.
Will Waller
Analyst, M3S
Yeah, probably shows that there's good demand. A lot of airlines don't want to return the engines, which I'd say is probably a positive trend. And then you kind of mentioned that A lot of these are new generation engines. I think you gave the statistic that 60% of your portfolio is now sort of the new tech engines. Is that by number or by dollar amount that's carried on your balance sheet of your equipment? Is it by number of engines or by dollar amount of engines that 60% is new tech engines?
Austin Willis
Chief Executive Officer
That's by dollar amount.
Will Waller
Analyst, M3S
Okay, perfect. All right, great quarter. And if there's no other questions, I might ask one more, but I'll drop back into the queue.
Austin Willis
Chief Executive Officer
Please.
spk04
Conference Call Operator
Thank you. We'll take our next question from Buckley Capital. Caller, please state your name.
spk02
Analyst, Buckley Capital
Hey, guys. Congrats on the quarter. I think we'll ask the majority of my questions. I guess I just want to make sure I understand sort of how much of that balance sheet increase related to the maintenance reserves was acquisitions versus organic.
Scott Flaherty
Chief Financial Officer
Thanks. So the amount of the increase that was related to cash flow on a year-to-date, like I said, was $27.8 million. and the rest, so on a year-to-date basis, so looking back, and the rest was related to acquisition.
spk02
Analyst, Buckley Capital
Got it. And then any commentary you guys have on like the pacing of how the Blackstone portfolio will kind of, you know, build over time?
Austin Willis
Chief Executive Officer
Yeah, I mean, it's going to be consistent with our general origination, and I'll say We've been pretty judicious about what we've bought over the past year. It's going to come down to where the market opportunities play out in 2027. I think there's a view that there may be more opportunities to acquire attractive assets at good values, and should that manifest itself, and I think we'll deploy pretty quickly. But these also do tend to be lumpy. So I know that's... That's not a very precise answer for you, but we have, I believe it's two years for the investment phase of the funds and our expectation is to deploy the capital well inside of that.
spk02
Analyst, Buckley Capital
Got it. And then I guess just last thing, is there any commentary you can have on kind of when the balance sheet item will be released into the income statement? Like will that happen in the next 12 months or any specificity you can provide would be helpful?
Scott Flaherty
Chief Financial Officer
You're talking about the specific maintenance reserves, sorry. No, it's hard for us to do that for a lot of the reasons that we're talking about. The assets get extended on lease, but it's over time it does get recognized, right? I mean, it's It's really all timing, right? The cash flow is happening on a current basis. Most of the engines that we have that are on long-term lease are going to be paying current MRs. So the cash flow is being realized in real time. But over time, the long-term MR will be realized. But it's really hard for us to say exactly when it is because the various terms of the lease. We look at our average portfolio is approximately two years, but the longer term leases are obviously longer than that and they'll be realized over that period.
spk02
Analyst, Buckley Capital
Got it. That's all. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Thank you.
spk04
Conference Call Operator
As a reminder, star one for questions. We'll go back to Will Waller with M3S.
Will Waller
Analyst, M3S
As it relates to the $200 million share repurchase authorization, when you look at the convertible debt, how do you look at buying back common stock versus potentially buying back that convertible debt? And with that, if you did go back into the markets and buy some of the debt that you recently issued, would that go against that repurchase authorization that you just authorized, or would that be something you could do outside of that?
Scott Flaherty
Chief Financial Officer
Yeah, so... So good question. It's two different things, right? The convertible bond is not part of a share repurchase program. So can we go out and buy debt in the open market and retire at a discount? Yes, we can. And that would not go against the $200 million program that we have on the share repurchase side. As always, we kind of look where we get the most bang for the buck for how we spend our dollars and how we allocate our capital and does it make sense to buy a share back or does it make sense to buy debt back in the open market? I mean, we've done all of these things in the past or does it make sense to put the next dollar into a new asset? We kind of evaluate all these things on a case-by-case basis to where we're going to generate the best returns for the business.
Will Waller
Analyst, M3S
Okay, that makes sense. And then I think at the end of last year, you had about, you know, appraisals were kind of showing the current market value of engines, I think were about $700 million above, you know, what was what they're carried out on the balance sheet. Does it feel like to you guys, I know you only get appraisals done once a year, I think on those, but with all the changes that have gone on with your portfolio with, you know, sales and so on, do you have any sense of what that gain might be today? The unrealized gain?
Scott Flaherty
Chief Financial Officer
Sure. Yeah. So So, Will, as you know, we do this once a year, and definitely I want to encourage you to stay tuned for when we do it, when we tell you next year. But I wouldn't expect there to be any material difference in kind of percentages, right? We haven't seen material movements, and our portfolio is material enough that it doesn't change anything. over any specific quarter. So I would expect to have consistent percentages that we've had in the past there.
Will Waller
Analyst, M3S
Great. That's good to hear and seems like the stock trades at such a discount to sort of what the And then one last question just kind of circling back to the topic I asked about before on long term maintenance revenues and so on. Do you know roughly what percentage of your leases are long-term versus short-term? I know historically it's kind of 50-50, but just kind of curious what that is these days.
Austin Willis
Chief Executive Officer
Yeah, that really hasn't changed very much, Will. It's still roughly 50-50.
Will Waller
Analyst, M3S
Okay, perfect. Well, thanks a lot. I really appreciate it.
Austin Willis
Chief Executive Officer
Thank you. Thank you, Will.
spk04
Conference Call Operator
With no additional questions in queue at this time, I'd like to turn the call back over to Austin Willis for any additional or closing remarks.
Austin Willis
Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Operator. We appreciate everybody giving us their time today, and we look forward to speaking to you again in the new year.
spk04
Conference Call Operator
That will conclude today's call. We appreciate your participation.