Washington, D.C. – The Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank) today announced the successful issuance of an Ex-Im Bank-guaranteed bond funded by the capital markets that raised $40.7 million for the Brazilian airline, VRG Linhas Aéreas S.A. (GOL), for engine-maintenance services performed by Delta TechOps in Atlanta, Ga. Delta TechOps is the maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) division of Delta Air Lines Inc.
The Ex-Im Bank-guaranteed bond was issued in mid-February to raise the funds to reimburse GOL for costs related to engine-maintenance services performed by Delta TechOps in 2013. The two-year bond bears interest at a fixed rate of 0.622 percent.
GOL issued the bond under a $45.5 million guarantee authorized by Ex-Im Bank in May 2013 to support Delta TechOps exports to the Brazilian airline. The financing is supporting an estimated 400 jobs at Delta TechOps, according to Ex-Im Bank’s jobs-calculation methodology.
"With this transaction, Ex-Im Bank continues to support hundreds of highly-skilled jobs of Delta TechOps in Atlanta," said Ex-Im Bank Chairman and President Fred P. Hochberg. "Our guarantee made possible the capital-markets funding of these services under Delta TechOps’s multiyear contract with GOL, a longtime Ex-Im Bank customer in Latin America.”
"Delta TechOps, a division of Delta Air Lines, is performing essential aircraft-engine maintenance and overhaul services for our existing fleet," said Paulo Kakinoff, chief executive officer of GOL. "The availability of Ex-Im Bank’s financing was the key to our choosing this U.S. provider for these services and is strengthening the partnership between our two companies."
The February 2014 issuance was the third successful Ex-Im Bank-guaranteed bond issuance to finance engine-maintenance services. The previous two issuances, which also supported Delta TechOps’s services to GOL, were done in 2012 under an $84.8 million Ex-Im Bank commitment approved the same year. The transaction earned Ex-Im Bank an Airfinance Journal “Deal of the Year” award in April 2013. The financing covered the first two years of GOL’s five-year engine-maintenance contract with Delta TechOps that was signed in December 2010.
In accordance with the contract, Delta TechOps is performing heavy maintenance on GOL's CFM56-7B engines that are installed on the airline's Boeing 737 next generation aircraft fleet. Delta TechOps is providing GOL with up to 253 scheduled engine removals and additional unscheduled removals. The GOL engines are shipped from São Paulo, Brazil, to Atlanta for heavy maintenance performed by Delta TechOps.
About Ex-Im Bank:
Ex-Im Bank is an independent federal agency that creates and maintains U.S. jobs by filling gaps in private export financing at no cost to American taxpayers. The Bank provides a variety of financing mechanisms, including working-capital guarantees, export-credit insurance and financing to help foreign buyers purchase U.S. goods and services. In the past fiscal year alone, Ex-Im Bank earned for U.S. taxpayers more than $1 billion above the cost of its operations.
In FY 2013, Ex-Im Bank approved more than $27 billion in total authorizations to support an estimated $37.4 billion in U.S. export sales and approximately 205,000 American jobs in communities across the country. For more information, visit www.exim.gov.
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