Equity | Case Study
Atlas Air Worldwide: Powering the Global Supply Chain
Atlas Air Worldwide, a global leader in airfreight logistics, partnered with Apollo to soar to new heights.
Despite being a cornerstone of the global supply chain, Atlas Air faced market misperceptions that undervalued its pivotal role. Apollo brought its deep aviation expertise, resources, and hands-on approach to help reposition Atlas Air in the market and equip it with the tools needed for sustainable growth.
The partnership has elevated Atlas Air’s role as a critical enabler of commerce—delivering essential goods, from consumer products to medical supplies, across the globe.
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Watch the video to discover how Apollo leveraged its deep aviation expertise and strategic capital solutions to transform Atlas Air Worldwide. By repositioning the company in the market and enabling reinvestment in the business, Apollo helped Atlas Air expand its capabilities, enhance its services, and solidify its role as a global leader in aviation logistics.
Antoine Munfakh, Partner, Private Equity: Atlas Air is one of the largest air cargo companies in the world. It moves consumer products, industrial products, medical equipment—everything that moves global economies—flies on Atlas planes.
Michael Steen, CEO, Atlas Air Worldwide: Our mission is to power our customers’ global supply chains. We operate into 70 countries around the world and some 220 destinations. We are right at the center of the global economy. We are touching people's lives in so many different shapes and forms.
Antoine Munfakh: Atlas has a blue-chip list of customers. It's a tremendous business model and one that was totally misunderstood by the markets.
Michael Steen: We were not seen as the player in the global supply chain that we actually are.
Patrick Kearney, Principal, Private Equity: Atlas has assets that…not only are in short supply now but forecasted to be in short supply going forward. If you combine that with the demand outlook, that's where it gets extremely interesting.
Antoine Munfakh: The aviation sector is extremely complicated, but it's an industry where Apollo has developed tremendous expertise over a long period of time. The challenging part was that this transaction was happening at a point in time when the capital markets were effectively shut. Thankfully the integrated platform at Apollo allowed us to pull together the financing and close the transaction.
Patrick Kearney: A lot of the problems that we have solved at other investments…we're able to learn from and leverage in the value creation plan for Atlas.
Michael Steen: We are very excited about the collaboration that we're building here between our investors and our management team and the board in general.
Antoine Munfakh: During economic downturns, many airline CEOs wake up thinking about covenants, liquidity, cashflow. The CEOs that we work with, wake up thinking about transformation and growth. We strive to set companies up to succeed in any market environment, not just when markets are going up.
Michael Steen: Our ability now, working together with very strong investment partners like Apollo, is always giving us an opportunity to reinvest in the business, reposition ourselves as a company and basically expand the services and the value that we're delivering to all of our stakeholders. Our vision is to become the undisputed leader of outsourced aviation logistics.
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