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Turkish Airlines profit almost triples

Turkish Airlines posted a 2014 net profit that almost tripled on Wednesday and unveiled plans to invest more than $3 billion mostly on its fleet, partly financed by a bond issue in the coming months.

Net profit rose to 1.82 billion lira ($739 million) from 683 million lira and in line with a Reuters poll forecast of 1.81 billion. Sales rose 29 per cent to 24.1 billion.

The airline said it and its subsidiaries planned around $3.74 billion in new investment this year, most of it on increasing its 261 fleet of aircraft.

Chairman Hamdi Topcu told a news conference that the company was in the final stages of a planned bond issue to diversify its sources of aircraft financing and that the issue was expected to be completed in the first half of the year.

The bond would be at least $500 million and could reach a volume of $2-3 billion with a maturity of up to 14 years, Chief financial officer Coskun Kilic said, adding that it would be used to finance existing aircraft as well as new planes.