Chairman & CEO’s Statement (cont’d.) 0 7 0 C A P I T A L A B E R H A D HOW WE’VE MADE IT Twenty years ago, we brought the lowcost revolut ion to Asia making i t affordable and accessible for everyone to fly. For the past 12 consecutive years, AirAsia has been named the world’s best low-cost airline and, in the process, has also become one of the best-known brands in the region. Value, choice and innovation are key cornerstones to our brand. Recently, we’ve been able to pivot successfully into one of Asean’s fastest growing online travel and lifestyle platforms by remaining nimble and agi le and leveraging the huge database we have accumulated over the past two decades, to create an ecosystem of synergistic lifestyle brands which embrace the digital era. This was something we were planning well before Covid-19 hit, but the downtime in flying caused by the pandemic gave us the opportunity to accelerate our transformation. Our airasia Super App now has over 16 travel and lifestyle services on the one platform to facilitate almost everything people want or need to do in their daily lives at a price they can afford. We have also created many other new businesses over the past two years including our own in-house digi tal engineer ing company called Asia Digital Engineering (ADE), BigPay fintech services and our logistics venture Teleport, to name just a few. Importantly, every new business we create is underpinned by the strength of the AirAsia brand and all remain committed to the same model which made us successful to begin with. Today, we are democratising much more than just air travel. OUR ORGANISATIONAL RESTRUCTURING In last year’s annual report, we had announced two core businesses under the Group – Airlines and Digital. In 2021, given the rapid development of the airasia Super App and readiness of some of our ventures to become stand-alone independent entities, we have further streamlined our portfolio companies. In effect, we now have six core businesses under Capital A (or the Group). The name change was to better reflect what we are today, namely an investment holding company with a portfolio of synergistic travel and lifestyle businesses which all deliver the best value at the lowest cost, supported by strong data. Expanding what the airline has done from day one, all the Group’s different lines of business will make travel and everyday lifestyle services affordable, accessible and inclusive to all. When we first started out, we had entertained the idea of naming the airline Tune Air, because many of us came from the music business and we always wanted to be more than an airline. However, we stuck with the name DRB-HICOM had given, and built it into such a strong brand that when we started diversifying into new digital businesses it was hard to break out of the mould that associated everything we did with the airlines. At the same time, we wanted to maintain a link with ‘AirAsia’, given the brand is one of the strongest in Asean. That led us to the letter ‘A’. ‘Capital’ was added because this is an investment holding company. Putting it at the front also creates a bold statement, which is reflective of who we are. We registered Capital A with the Companies Commission of Malaysia (SSM) on 2 January 2022, and received shareholders’ approval on our new corporate identity at an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) on 27 January 2022. The next day, we received the Notice of Registration of New Name, issued by SSM. SURVIVING THE PANDEMIC Wi thout doubt , one of our key achievements in 2021 was to continue to survive in what has been the most disruptive global travel environment ever. This has been made possible by raising close to RM2.5 billion, as we said we would, the sum comprising RM300 million from Sabah Development Bank; RM336.5 million from a private placement; RM975 million from Redeemable Convertible Unsecured Islamic Debt Secur ities (RCUIDS); up to USD100 mi l l ion in i nv e s tmen t f r om Sou t h Ko r ean conglomerate SK Group for BigPay. In March 2022, we decided not to go ahead with the Danajamin Prihatin Guarantee Scheme club facility because we were unable to accept and/or fulfil certain conditions.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy ODU0MjU5