This Company Lets You Use a Private Jet for $10,000 Per Hour | At Barron's
Summary
Business Model Innovation: Vista Jet offers a unique subscription model for private jet access, allowing clients to pay only for the hours they need, rather than purchasing a fraction of an aircraft, which provides flexibility and cost efficiency.
Global Fleet Strategy: Vista Jet operates a fleet of 230 aircraft with no fixed home base, enabling efficient global coverage and minimizing empty return flights by matching flights with client needs worldwide.
Market Position: While competitors like NetJets have a larger fleet, Vista Jet distinguishes itself with a focus on super-mid and ultra-long-range aircraft, providing global reach across all continents, including emerging markets like the Middle East and India.
Customer Base: The company serves a mix of corporate clients and ultra-high-net-worth individuals, with a significant portion of revenue coming from long-term subscription members, highlighting the appeal of their tailored service offerings.
Operational Excellence: Vista Jet emphasizes safety and security, working closely with global authorities and compliance firms to ensure safe operations in diverse and sometimes remote destinations.
Financial Performance: Despite not being profitable on a GAAP net income basis, Vista Jet is cash flow positive, with significant revenue growth and a focus on EBITDA and cash flow as key performance indicators.
Industry Outlook: The private aviation market is expected to grow at double the rate of GDP, driven by the increasing importance of time efficiency for industry leaders and the expanding global reach of business jets.
Future Vision: Vista Jet aims to shift the market from aircraft ownership to efficient usage models, leveraging their global infrastructure and client-focused service to capture more market share.
Transcript
[Music] Hello everyone and welcome to At Barrens. I'm Andy Sir and welcome to our guest Thomas Flor who is the chairman and founder of Vista. Thomas, great to see you. >> Great to see you. Happy to be here. >> So I want to ask you about your company of course which is the owner of Vista Jet. Tell us about Vista Jet and the various other businesses that you have. Well, look, I got into business aviation really by being a quite frustrated client of this industry and that was about 21 years ago. And uh what I saw was it was actually either a random charter opportunity where you wouldn't know what you get until you arrive at the airport and or otherwise you had to buy a full airplane or a fraction of an airplane. And all that kind of like wasn't intuitively making sense to me. you just wanted to fly, but I wanted to make sure that I get exactly what I know and what I understand as a product. And think about any other industry, right? Any hotel industry at the very top end, the presidential suite. I mean, you're making a decision for 10, 15,000. And you would make absolutely sure that you know what you're getting and the quality of the product and so on and so forth. In this industry, unless you owned a full airplane, you wouldn't know what you get. And that didn't make any sense to me. And you're selling to the wealthiest and most influential people. So that's what Vista came about. And I said, "Okay, why don't we build a fleet of absolutely identical airplanes all around the world and give clients access to it with a simple subscription program?" >> Right. And so what kind of jets do you fly and how many aircraft do you have at this point, Tom? >> So today we have about 230 aircraft. Uh we're focusing mainly on what is called supermitt and ultra longrange airplanes. That would be Challenger 350 from Bombardier or Global 7500 from Bombardier. Uh the fleet is mainly Bombardier product, but we also have other manufacturers and uh it's a freely floating fleet around the world. So these 230 airplanes, they don't have a home base. And I think that's the other invention uh that we started at Vista some 20 years ago because for me it never made sense that an airplane has to have a home base >> because it should be flying to a city picking up the next client and finding another client in the city of destination and like that fle freely floating around the world. >> That 230 aircraft how does that stack up against netjets which I guess is a competitor of yours here in the United States or globally as well right? >> Yeah sure. Uh so N just is focusing in their entire fleet. So they're bigger, they have more airplanes, but most of the fleet if you do the count is on smaller aircraft. Smaller aircraft is like uh maybe airplanes with two or three hours of range. And then at the top end of course they have a fair amount of airplanes especially in the United States. Uh but when it comes to the global coverage, no company covers the globe like we do on all five continents. So we're in Europe, we're in the Middle East, we're in Asia, we're in Africa, we're in Australia. And I thought when I started Vista that you really really need to cover cover the entire globe because if any product should get you anywhere, it is business jets. And you got to make sure that you know you can as easily as owning an airplane get to Japan, get to Australia without this evil word of empty lake of having to pay for the plane to go back to the original destination. And I saw that as a very much an inefficient part of this industry that very often planes fly empty back to their original country of origin. And that of course we could only resolve by having clients all around the world. So think about it. We're flying from here to Japan and if this plane needs to fly empty back to United States, that's a waste. >> But how do you mitigate against that? >> Well, by having a client base in Japan. So once this plane from America lands in Japan, we would most likely have a client in Japan that might need to go to Mumbai. >> So maybe we don't have a client in Mumbai, but we have one in Delhi. Then from Delhi it might fly to Abu Dhabi and it is like that that these 230 aircraft are floating freely around the globe and hence driving a lot of efficiency on utilization and that allows us to offer a price point which is more competitive. >> Are your customers corporate or high netw worth individuals or both? >> That's a very very good question. Um I would say it's about 8020 corporate versus ultra high netw worth individuals with the one reserve I would like to make and this is that ultra high netw worth individuals very often have a stake in a company and therefore you know in today's life where you work seven days a week all year round very often there is a crossover at the very top end >> and security must be a big concern for your customers how do you integrate their security needs with your business >> well there's safety and security um especially when you run a global company like ours with you know we're flying to 196 countries per per year so sometimes very remote destinations so we're working very much with the authorities obviously in the country we're flying to we're working with world compliance so there is different companies that provide us for every single flight enough information for us to judge whether it's safe to fly to this country or not and that is being presented to the client or if they were the slightest concerns then we would communicate this with the client. However, if we feel and would deem it not safe, we would not fly even if the client would insist. >> So, let me ask you about the nitty-gritty of the actual subscription. I want to become a customer. How much do I have to spend? How many years do I have to sign up for? Etc. >> So, it's typically a three-year contract, >> but what we do different than anybody else is we're not saying you have to buy a quarter of an airplane or an eighth of an airplane. would just learn what flight profile you have and we would offer you exactly the number of hours that you need. You might need per year 135 hours. So why do I need to sell you 100 or 200? I I'll offer you 135. And then we would tailor it really to the missions that you're actually planning. What does it mean? Well, you might fly a few times within the United States and you might have four international trips with a very long hall. So, we would then allocate part of the 135 hours onto the Global Express fleet. Maybe we give you 40 hours on the Global Express, again, totally to your needs, and the others on the Super Mid airplane. So, we're really tailoring it to exactly the need you you have. And that for corporations is extremely attractive because they don't feel like they have to take what is available but rather tailored to exactly their needs. >> And the price point say of flying overseas is different from domestic. >> No, the price per hour is more or less the same. There might be search charges if you land in China or in in India that are significantly higher than the landing costs in New York or Miami, but it's it's a fractionally slightly more expensive. But other than that, it's a fixed hourly rate. And >> what is it approximately? >> Well, it could be, of course, first of all, it's different paragraph type, size, etc. But I think as a rule of thumb, it's probably somewhere between$10,000 and $25,000 an hour. >> Right. Right. And that is makes good economic sense for people who travel a lot, people who are wealthy companies, and whose executives time is very valuable. Well, and and think about it. The the if your alternative is to buy an aircraft, a full aircraft, >> right? >> Um you carry the entire infrastructure cost, the capital cost, the pilots, the the back office, you're carrying over the number of hours you fly. Even if you fly three or 400 hours per year, we are flying these airplanes, especially ultra longrange airplanes up to 1500 hours. So our cost point per hour is significantly lower. Part of it we can pass on to our clients. The other part is the profitability of the company. >> And how is business going? I mean you've got some headwinds in terms of you know higher interest rates. You've got this globalization thing that seems to be going backwards. >> How do you see it? >> Well look I mean first of all the company continues to grow. We continue to take market share. uh we just had our earnings call the Q2 earnings call again we offered and we reported uh significantly growth in the company on a global scale on every single continent. Um geopolitically of course we have you know certain war situations we have interruptions we had you know last couple of months situation in Israel and you know when some days you can fly in on other days you can't so it's very tailored to the situation obviously Russia Ukraine is a absolute no-go um and and I think that's part of operating a global business but uh the the client base that we have the the kind of like when they need to go, they need to go and and so they're waiting for the right window. Um we had this specifically with Tel Aviv over the last 6 to 8 months where they might be standby saying, "Okay, let's wait until it's safe to fly in and fly back out." So that's a that's in general a headwind, but our clients still fly. They just wait for the right window. I think interest rates are are not really of a concern to us. We have long-term finance contracts in place and and we have unsecured bonds in our in our in our capital stack and and our cost of funding is very very you know attractive to us as a company with obviously a capital intensive business uh needs to carry a balance sheet with significant amount of airplanes but uh we don't see the cost pressure from that side I think the cost pressures in a postcoid world came from you know spare parts from supply chains that were interrupted. Um, and at times you just couldn't get your hands on certain spare parts and and airplanes were down. But most of that is really back to to normality. But there were years in 22 and 23 when it was challenging to get spare parts for airplanes. And if one I always said, how can a $75 million factory be closed for a $5,000 part missing? Mhm. Right. >> But that's that's the way we had to think about this. So uh but this it's has very much normalized and uh and so that is kind of like behind us. >> You mentioned leverage. I mean the company does have a fair amount of leverage on its balance sheet and it's not profitable on a gap basis net income. Are those things you plan to address going forward or can the company sustain based on those levels? Right now >> the company is absolutely cash flow positive. So we're not we're not uh in a situation where we need to raise capital continue the business. I think if you look at the gap net income or it's an endless discussion around your depreciation policy and that is an accounting decision you take or or you adapt all our stakeholders neither the bond holders nor the shareholders give us any pressure whatsoever to have a net income figure to a certain target. Um it it's really IBIDA and the cash flow generation of the company that's driving the KPIs and it's to that extent how we manage the company. >> And going back to the the traffic and where you fly is the bulk of the business in the United States and North America and I understand you're flying to KSA, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia more and more. What are the growth areas and what are the strongest areas? >> Well, the strongest areas right here in America. Um we are now a very significant established player in the United States Vista US. Half of our revenue is in America >> which makes us very proud. I you know if you ask me later on of what one of my mistakes were I came too late to America. I only came here in 2014 15 and and there are established players. They still are here but to become successful in this country as a foreigner not easy. But uh here we are in 10 years later and we have a half of our fleet is uh we have 120 125 airplanes in this country. Um growth areas um definitely emerging markets is uh is a hot spot. This is where we're very good. Middle East is growing extremely strong. And you mentioned Saudi Arabia. We were awarded last week for the first internal flying license, the right to operate within Saudi. Very proud of that. It was a long process of being vetted um looked at in great details whether we can actually live up to the standards and and that is certainly a very very significant market and and and when you look at the the the the change in the kingdom um under the leadership of how the much the market is opening up and wanting the best product in the in the country then it's very much along the lines and so uh we're very excited about this collaboration >> and what about revenues and customers. What are annual revenues at this point, Thomas? And how many customers do you have? How do you measure that then? >> Well, we're at about $3 billion of revenue. Um the number of customers we cannot mix up with the number of passengers because of course that's a completely different figure, but think about it um that there are approximately 1,500 uh what we call program members. Okay? And that figure is growing significantly every year. So the portion of our revenue that is created by our long-term subscription members is very high. Okay. And then we have other members which are not signing up for three-year agreements. Those are those are kind of like um members that give a certain deposit and then can fly wherever they want around the world but uh more on an ondemand basis. So, uh, I think all in if you if you bring the two groups together, you're looking at about 5,000, uh, permanent clients that are rebuking with us. But, of course, the number of clients actually fly with us because we also have an ondemand product uh, is a is a number a multiple of the 5,000. >> The Wall Street Journal noted that you have sort of a complex structure when it comes to buying aircraft. >> Why do you have that sort of way of buying aircraft? Well, it's a thing way from the past. Okay. A simple fact is me as an entrepreneur, I had a big vision. Uh I saw that this market was way underserved with the best qual quality product. Um I always make this example, you know, when you book the presidential suite of the four seasonal peninsula, uh it sets you back 20,000, but you have it for 24 hours. With us, you might be paying it at on an ultra long range jet per hour. So we got to be I always say we got to be 24 times better than than the presidential suite. And I had a vision in 2012 that this business could really be taken from what was a European Middle Eastern business to a truly global business. The company's revenue at the time I think they were something like 300 million. And how could I ever place an order for you know I think at the time it was uh close to5 billion dollars. I could have placed an order of that magnitude with a company of of uh 300 million revenue. So I took the order myself. I own the company 100%. and everything was disclosed. And then of course there was a journal rel you know referred to related party transaction and once the company grew and actually grew into the vision that I had uh eventually you know I brought in another shareholder the wonderful company based here in New York Ron Capital and everything was disclosed to the nth degree and and then there is a transfer pricing which needs to match the principle of market price. I myself never had a vote in this pricing between the company and myself to obviously be be neutral on it and that's what they were referring to but um there was a fair amount of populism around this discussion rather than sticking with the facts. How do you you're talking about growing in the United States and the growth that you you've got here when you're going into a corporate suite and you're saying okay I know there's Warren Buffett's little company over here but we're here >> and so what is the value proposition? How are you selling against for instance NetJets or other competitors in the United States? >> Sure. I mean they're all great companies. We respect them a lot. I I think big corporates one of the things we do is we invite them to come to our operation center do due diligence on us. We I think our biggest selling tool is is asking them for due diligence on on how we run the business and and usually they're absolutely blown away by the by the actual quality of operation by all the safety standards we put in place. We just announced you know a certain new method of how we do uh actually training of the pilots and the infrastructure etc. And then of course they're looking at the economics and while spying a fraction of an airplane might initially look as a interesting you know proposition I I make it very simple you know if you if you buy an airplane at 20 million and you sell the shares at 28 million then right out of the gate on the share you buy you lose 25 or 30%. And then on the way out when you want to sell the share of your fractional company, you can only sell it back to the company that you bought it from. I personally have a problem with that. I'm an asset finance guy. I very much value the flexibility of an asset market of a fungeible product. And if I can only sell to one party, I feel stuck. And if you make the calculation after three or five years of what that fraction really depreciated and you add it back into the hours that you bought, you know, more often than not, you will have a significant surprise which financially puts you at a disadvantage over our hourly rate. So the simple answer is great due diligence on our operational excellence as well as the financial advantage in a lower hourly rate. I want to ask about you just a little bit. You're Swiss and you're also a race car driver, right? Tell us about that part of your life. >> Well, I'm a passionate sports person. I used to play tennis. I as a student I ran fielded track 800 meters and and uh motorsport always excited me and uh eventually I I started in uh local championships and maybe in Italy Switzerland doesn't have much or any motorsport and eventually we were quite good and we made it to the European championship. We came second in that and that allowed me eventually to participate in the world championship which is called World Endurance Championship WEC the FIA which is you know the obviously the governing body for F for Formula 1 and for World Endurance Championship and uh yeah that's a series which uh brings me to um basically four out of the five continents. Um this weekend we're racing in Austin in Circuit of the Americas. Oh, in what city? >> In Austin. >> In Austin, Texas. Oh, great. And And you're part of Ferrari. >> I am part of Yeah. So Ferrari. Yeah. So the World Endurance Championship has two categories. One is hypercar, the other one GT. We're racing in the GT. And each manufacturer, it's basically a manufacturer world championship. And each manufacturer has two cars. And so we're the two official cars in the Ferrari World Endurance Championship. >> And final question, Thomas. What do you think the future of private aviation >> looks like? What does this business look like five 10 years from now? >> Well, look, the the main driver of this industry is really the time efficiencies of the seauite of the of people are leading industries. They're leading their they might be sports people, they might be uh physicians, they might be the the best of their respective uh uh environment. And in today's world, time becomes more and more and more important on how you actually manage your time. And business jets just give you that extra flexibility, that extra time saving, that that arriving at the destination in the most, you know, uh, healthy and comfortable way and maximizing your own capabilities. And I think that trend has a long runway of still a in public appearance to actually be something very very good because we're bringing more efficiency out of the same leaders than we have today. So I see the market is usually being uh being judged as grow growing at double GDP. So if GDP grows at three, this market would grow six 7%. And if you then deep dive into this market um the global scale of it will only continue to expand into every single continent. The US today is of course leading this industry. Uh if we look at trends just like we saw in the Middle East with the Saudi opening etc. I think the concept of business jets will be significantly more popular in some regions in the world. for example, India. We now have a fullyfledged operation within India. There's 1.4 billion people. And then ultimately, my vision is that the archai concept of owning a jet rather than just using it in the most efficient way uh is is the trend that will will succeed. And hence, we're laser focused exactly on this business model. Uh because at the end, the customers are voting with their wallet. saying, "Okay, >> who do we give the money to?" And more often than not, it's it's uh it's Vista. >> Thomas Flor, chairman and founder of Vista. Thank you so much for joining us. >> Great seeing you. Thanks for having me. >> This is At Barrens. I'm Andy Sir. We'll check you next time.
This Company Lets You Use a Private Jet for $10,000 Per Hour | At Barron's
Summary
Transcript
[Music] Hello everyone and welcome to At Barrens. I'm Andy Sir and welcome to our guest Thomas Flor who is the chairman and founder of Vista. Thomas, great to see you. >> Great to see you. Happy to be here. >> So I want to ask you about your company of course which is the owner of Vista Jet. Tell us about Vista Jet and the various other businesses that you have. Well, look, I got into business aviation really by being a quite frustrated client of this industry and that was about 21 years ago. And uh what I saw was it was actually either a random charter opportunity where you wouldn't know what you get until you arrive at the airport and or otherwise you had to buy a full airplane or a fraction of an airplane. And all that kind of like wasn't intuitively making sense to me. you just wanted to fly, but I wanted to make sure that I get exactly what I know and what I understand as a product. And think about any other industry, right? Any hotel industry at the very top end, the presidential suite. I mean, you're making a decision for 10, 15,000. And you would make absolutely sure that you know what you're getting and the quality of the product and so on and so forth. In this industry, unless you owned a full airplane, you wouldn't know what you get. And that didn't make any sense to me. And you're selling to the wealthiest and most influential people. So that's what Vista came about. And I said, "Okay, why don't we build a fleet of absolutely identical airplanes all around the world and give clients access to it with a simple subscription program?" >> Right. And so what kind of jets do you fly and how many aircraft do you have at this point, Tom? >> So today we have about 230 aircraft. Uh we're focusing mainly on what is called supermitt and ultra longrange airplanes. That would be Challenger 350 from Bombardier or Global 7500 from Bombardier. Uh the fleet is mainly Bombardier product, but we also have other manufacturers and uh it's a freely floating fleet around the world. So these 230 airplanes, they don't have a home base. And I think that's the other invention uh that we started at Vista some 20 years ago because for me it never made sense that an airplane has to have a home base >> because it should be flying to a city picking up the next client and finding another client in the city of destination and like that fle freely floating around the world. >> That 230 aircraft how does that stack up against netjets which I guess is a competitor of yours here in the United States or globally as well right? >> Yeah sure. Uh so N just is focusing in their entire fleet. So they're bigger, they have more airplanes, but most of the fleet if you do the count is on smaller aircraft. Smaller aircraft is like uh maybe airplanes with two or three hours of range. And then at the top end of course they have a fair amount of airplanes especially in the United States. Uh but when it comes to the global coverage, no company covers the globe like we do on all five continents. So we're in Europe, we're in the Middle East, we're in Asia, we're in Africa, we're in Australia. And I thought when I started Vista that you really really need to cover cover the entire globe because if any product should get you anywhere, it is business jets. And you got to make sure that you know you can as easily as owning an airplane get to Japan, get to Australia without this evil word of empty lake of having to pay for the plane to go back to the original destination. And I saw that as a very much an inefficient part of this industry that very often planes fly empty back to their original country of origin. And that of course we could only resolve by having clients all around the world. So think about it. We're flying from here to Japan and if this plane needs to fly empty back to United States, that's a waste. >> But how do you mitigate against that? >> Well, by having a client base in Japan. So once this plane from America lands in Japan, we would most likely have a client in Japan that might need to go to Mumbai. >> So maybe we don't have a client in Mumbai, but we have one in Delhi. Then from Delhi it might fly to Abu Dhabi and it is like that that these 230 aircraft are floating freely around the globe and hence driving a lot of efficiency on utilization and that allows us to offer a price point which is more competitive. >> Are your customers corporate or high netw worth individuals or both? >> That's a very very good question. Um I would say it's about 8020 corporate versus ultra high netw worth individuals with the one reserve I would like to make and this is that ultra high netw worth individuals very often have a stake in a company and therefore you know in today's life where you work seven days a week all year round very often there is a crossover at the very top end >> and security must be a big concern for your customers how do you integrate their security needs with your business >> well there's safety and security um especially when you run a global company like ours with you know we're flying to 196 countries per per year so sometimes very remote destinations so we're working very much with the authorities obviously in the country we're flying to we're working with world compliance so there is different companies that provide us for every single flight enough information for us to judge whether it's safe to fly to this country or not and that is being presented to the client or if they were the slightest concerns then we would communicate this with the client. However, if we feel and would deem it not safe, we would not fly even if the client would insist. >> So, let me ask you about the nitty-gritty of the actual subscription. I want to become a customer. How much do I have to spend? How many years do I have to sign up for? Etc. >> So, it's typically a three-year contract, >> but what we do different than anybody else is we're not saying you have to buy a quarter of an airplane or an eighth of an airplane. would just learn what flight profile you have and we would offer you exactly the number of hours that you need. You might need per year 135 hours. So why do I need to sell you 100 or 200? I I'll offer you 135. And then we would tailor it really to the missions that you're actually planning. What does it mean? Well, you might fly a few times within the United States and you might have four international trips with a very long hall. So, we would then allocate part of the 135 hours onto the Global Express fleet. Maybe we give you 40 hours on the Global Express, again, totally to your needs, and the others on the Super Mid airplane. So, we're really tailoring it to exactly the need you you have. And that for corporations is extremely attractive because they don't feel like they have to take what is available but rather tailored to exactly their needs. >> And the price point say of flying overseas is different from domestic. >> No, the price per hour is more or less the same. There might be search charges if you land in China or in in India that are significantly higher than the landing costs in New York or Miami, but it's it's a fractionally slightly more expensive. But other than that, it's a fixed hourly rate. And >> what is it approximately? >> Well, it could be, of course, first of all, it's different paragraph type, size, etc. But I think as a rule of thumb, it's probably somewhere between$10,000 and $25,000 an hour. >> Right. Right. And that is makes good economic sense for people who travel a lot, people who are wealthy companies, and whose executives time is very valuable. Well, and and think about it. The the if your alternative is to buy an aircraft, a full aircraft, >> right? >> Um you carry the entire infrastructure cost, the capital cost, the pilots, the the back office, you're carrying over the number of hours you fly. Even if you fly three or 400 hours per year, we are flying these airplanes, especially ultra longrange airplanes up to 1500 hours. So our cost point per hour is significantly lower. Part of it we can pass on to our clients. The other part is the profitability of the company. >> And how is business going? I mean you've got some headwinds in terms of you know higher interest rates. You've got this globalization thing that seems to be going backwards. >> How do you see it? >> Well look I mean first of all the company continues to grow. We continue to take market share. uh we just had our earnings call the Q2 earnings call again we offered and we reported uh significantly growth in the company on a global scale on every single continent. Um geopolitically of course we have you know certain war situations we have interruptions we had you know last couple of months situation in Israel and you know when some days you can fly in on other days you can't so it's very tailored to the situation obviously Russia Ukraine is a absolute no-go um and and I think that's part of operating a global business but uh the the client base that we have the the kind of like when they need to go, they need to go and and so they're waiting for the right window. Um we had this specifically with Tel Aviv over the last 6 to 8 months where they might be standby saying, "Okay, let's wait until it's safe to fly in and fly back out." So that's a that's in general a headwind, but our clients still fly. They just wait for the right window. I think interest rates are are not really of a concern to us. We have long-term finance contracts in place and and we have unsecured bonds in our in our in our capital stack and and our cost of funding is very very you know attractive to us as a company with obviously a capital intensive business uh needs to carry a balance sheet with significant amount of airplanes but uh we don't see the cost pressure from that side I think the cost pressures in a postcoid world came from you know spare parts from supply chains that were interrupted. Um, and at times you just couldn't get your hands on certain spare parts and and airplanes were down. But most of that is really back to to normality. But there were years in 22 and 23 when it was challenging to get spare parts for airplanes. And if one I always said, how can a $75 million factory be closed for a $5,000 part missing? Mhm. Right. >> But that's that's the way we had to think about this. So uh but this it's has very much normalized and uh and so that is kind of like behind us. >> You mentioned leverage. I mean the company does have a fair amount of leverage on its balance sheet and it's not profitable on a gap basis net income. Are those things you plan to address going forward or can the company sustain based on those levels? Right now >> the company is absolutely cash flow positive. So we're not we're not uh in a situation where we need to raise capital continue the business. I think if you look at the gap net income or it's an endless discussion around your depreciation policy and that is an accounting decision you take or or you adapt all our stakeholders neither the bond holders nor the shareholders give us any pressure whatsoever to have a net income figure to a certain target. Um it it's really IBIDA and the cash flow generation of the company that's driving the KPIs and it's to that extent how we manage the company. >> And going back to the the traffic and where you fly is the bulk of the business in the United States and North America and I understand you're flying to KSA, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia more and more. What are the growth areas and what are the strongest areas? >> Well, the strongest areas right here in America. Um we are now a very significant established player in the United States Vista US. Half of our revenue is in America >> which makes us very proud. I you know if you ask me later on of what one of my mistakes were I came too late to America. I only came here in 2014 15 and and there are established players. They still are here but to become successful in this country as a foreigner not easy. But uh here we are in 10 years later and we have a half of our fleet is uh we have 120 125 airplanes in this country. Um growth areas um definitely emerging markets is uh is a hot spot. This is where we're very good. Middle East is growing extremely strong. And you mentioned Saudi Arabia. We were awarded last week for the first internal flying license, the right to operate within Saudi. Very proud of that. It was a long process of being vetted um looked at in great details whether we can actually live up to the standards and and that is certainly a very very significant market and and and when you look at the the the the change in the kingdom um under the leadership of how the much the market is opening up and wanting the best product in the in the country then it's very much along the lines and so uh we're very excited about this collaboration >> and what about revenues and customers. What are annual revenues at this point, Thomas? And how many customers do you have? How do you measure that then? >> Well, we're at about $3 billion of revenue. Um the number of customers we cannot mix up with the number of passengers because of course that's a completely different figure, but think about it um that there are approximately 1,500 uh what we call program members. Okay? And that figure is growing significantly every year. So the portion of our revenue that is created by our long-term subscription members is very high. Okay. And then we have other members which are not signing up for three-year agreements. Those are those are kind of like um members that give a certain deposit and then can fly wherever they want around the world but uh more on an ondemand basis. So, uh, I think all in if you if you bring the two groups together, you're looking at about 5,000, uh, permanent clients that are rebuking with us. But, of course, the number of clients actually fly with us because we also have an ondemand product uh, is a is a number a multiple of the 5,000. >> The Wall Street Journal noted that you have sort of a complex structure when it comes to buying aircraft. >> Why do you have that sort of way of buying aircraft? Well, it's a thing way from the past. Okay. A simple fact is me as an entrepreneur, I had a big vision. Uh I saw that this market was way underserved with the best qual quality product. Um I always make this example, you know, when you book the presidential suite of the four seasonal peninsula, uh it sets you back 20,000, but you have it for 24 hours. With us, you might be paying it at on an ultra long range jet per hour. So we got to be I always say we got to be 24 times better than than the presidential suite. And I had a vision in 2012 that this business could really be taken from what was a European Middle Eastern business to a truly global business. The company's revenue at the time I think they were something like 300 million. And how could I ever place an order for you know I think at the time it was uh close to5 billion dollars. I could have placed an order of that magnitude with a company of of uh 300 million revenue. So I took the order myself. I own the company 100%. and everything was disclosed. And then of course there was a journal rel you know referred to related party transaction and once the company grew and actually grew into the vision that I had uh eventually you know I brought in another shareholder the wonderful company based here in New York Ron Capital and everything was disclosed to the nth degree and and then there is a transfer pricing which needs to match the principle of market price. I myself never had a vote in this pricing between the company and myself to obviously be be neutral on it and that's what they were referring to but um there was a fair amount of populism around this discussion rather than sticking with the facts. How do you you're talking about growing in the United States and the growth that you you've got here when you're going into a corporate suite and you're saying okay I know there's Warren Buffett's little company over here but we're here >> and so what is the value proposition? How are you selling against for instance NetJets or other competitors in the United States? >> Sure. I mean they're all great companies. We respect them a lot. I I think big corporates one of the things we do is we invite them to come to our operation center do due diligence on us. We I think our biggest selling tool is is asking them for due diligence on on how we run the business and and usually they're absolutely blown away by the by the actual quality of operation by all the safety standards we put in place. We just announced you know a certain new method of how we do uh actually training of the pilots and the infrastructure etc. And then of course they're looking at the economics and while spying a fraction of an airplane might initially look as a interesting you know proposition I I make it very simple you know if you if you buy an airplane at 20 million and you sell the shares at 28 million then right out of the gate on the share you buy you lose 25 or 30%. And then on the way out when you want to sell the share of your fractional company, you can only sell it back to the company that you bought it from. I personally have a problem with that. I'm an asset finance guy. I very much value the flexibility of an asset market of a fungeible product. And if I can only sell to one party, I feel stuck. And if you make the calculation after three or five years of what that fraction really depreciated and you add it back into the hours that you bought, you know, more often than not, you will have a significant surprise which financially puts you at a disadvantage over our hourly rate. So the simple answer is great due diligence on our operational excellence as well as the financial advantage in a lower hourly rate. I want to ask about you just a little bit. You're Swiss and you're also a race car driver, right? Tell us about that part of your life. >> Well, I'm a passionate sports person. I used to play tennis. I as a student I ran fielded track 800 meters and and uh motorsport always excited me and uh eventually I I started in uh local championships and maybe in Italy Switzerland doesn't have much or any motorsport and eventually we were quite good and we made it to the European championship. We came second in that and that allowed me eventually to participate in the world championship which is called World Endurance Championship WEC the FIA which is you know the obviously the governing body for F for Formula 1 and for World Endurance Championship and uh yeah that's a series which uh brings me to um basically four out of the five continents. Um this weekend we're racing in Austin in Circuit of the Americas. Oh, in what city? >> In Austin. >> In Austin, Texas. Oh, great. And And you're part of Ferrari. >> I am part of Yeah. So Ferrari. Yeah. So the World Endurance Championship has two categories. One is hypercar, the other one GT. We're racing in the GT. And each manufacturer, it's basically a manufacturer world championship. And each manufacturer has two cars. And so we're the two official cars in the Ferrari World Endurance Championship. >> And final question, Thomas. What do you think the future of private aviation >> looks like? What does this business look like five 10 years from now? >> Well, look, the the main driver of this industry is really the time efficiencies of the seauite of the of people are leading industries. They're leading their they might be sports people, they might be uh physicians, they might be the the best of their respective uh uh environment. And in today's world, time becomes more and more and more important on how you actually manage your time. And business jets just give you that extra flexibility, that extra time saving, that that arriving at the destination in the most, you know, uh, healthy and comfortable way and maximizing your own capabilities. And I think that trend has a long runway of still a in public appearance to actually be something very very good because we're bringing more efficiency out of the same leaders than we have today. So I see the market is usually being uh being judged as grow growing at double GDP. So if GDP grows at three, this market would grow six 7%. And if you then deep dive into this market um the global scale of it will only continue to expand into every single continent. The US today is of course leading this industry. Uh if we look at trends just like we saw in the Middle East with the Saudi opening etc. I think the concept of business jets will be significantly more popular in some regions in the world. for example, India. We now have a fullyfledged operation within India. There's 1.4 billion people. And then ultimately, my vision is that the archai concept of owning a jet rather than just using it in the most efficient way uh is is the trend that will will succeed. And hence, we're laser focused exactly on this business model. Uh because at the end, the customers are voting with their wallet. saying, "Okay, >> who do we give the money to?" And more often than not, it's it's uh it's Vista. >> Thomas Flor, chairman and founder of Vista. Thank you so much for joining us. >> Great seeing you. Thanks for having me. >> This is At Barrens. I'm Andy Sir. We'll check you next time.