Maman: How Much Cash Is Really Left After Leases, Debt, and Investment

The main article already established that aviation recovery improved Maman’s earnings and covenant headroom, but did not by itself resolve the question of accessible cash. This follow-up isolates only that issue. Not whether 2025 was operationally better, that part is already clear. The question here is how much cash the group actually kept after leases, investment, and debt service.

The answer is sharper than the NIS 194.6 million operating-cash-flow headline suggests. On an all-in cash-flexibility basis, 2025 still did not leave Maman with clean residual cash. After NIS 58.2 million of fixed-asset and intangible investment, NIS 112.8 million of lease principal, and NIS 63.1 million of loan and bond amortization, the year ends with an approximately NIS 39.6 million deficit before dividends to non-controlling interests, and about NIS 45.1 million after them.

The apparent contradiction with covenant comfort is actually the core point. On the covenant basis, with IFRS 16 excluded, net financial debt to CAP stands at 13%, equity to assets stands at 56.2%, and equity stands at NIS 687.8 million. In the consolidated balance sheet itself, equity is NIS 634.5 million, only 30% of the balance sheet, while lease liabilities stand at NIS 966.6 million versus only NIS 236.5 million of financial debt. That is not an accounting inconsistency. It is simply a different lens.

Three points organize the read:

• The headline cash-flow number is not the residual-cash number. Operating cash flow also included about NIS 30 million of dividends from a jointly controlled company. Excluding that amount lowers the starting point to roughly NIS 164.6 million.
• Leases are the main cash use. The cash-flow statement records NIS 112.8 million of lease principal, and the lease note records NIS 155.0 million of total lease payments.
• Financial debt fell, but the total obligation layer did not become light. Financial debt fell to NIS 236.5 million from NIS 299.2 million, while lease liabilities rose to NIS 966.6 million from NIS 829.0 million.

Three Cash Frames, and Only One Answers the Real Question

2025 has to be read through three separate cash frames, without mixing them:

I am not trying to build an analyst-estimated maintenance-capex bridge here. The report does not disclose one, and inventing it would weaken the grounding. That is exactly why the all-in cash picture matters. It is built from reported uses that already happened.

That bridge still leaves out two items. The first is the NIS 5.5 million dividend paid to non-controlling interests, which deepens the deficit to about NIS 45.1 million. The second is the smaller positive investment-flow items, such as interest received, sublease receipts, and deposit release, which closed part of the gap and explain why the cash balance declined by about NIS 28.9 million before FX and by about NIS 32.6 million including FX.

That is the key distinction between a strong profit year and clean financing flexibility. The year did improve materially. But even a better year still did not leave Maman with truly free excess cash after every hard commitment.

That is a real improvement versus 2024, mainly because the prior year included the full repayment of Series B. But even after that improvement, 2025 is still not the kind of year in which cash remains comfortably available without help from the debt market and without heavy uses on the way.

Leases Are the Real Debt Layer

If Maman is read only through financial debt, the picture stays incomplete. Financial debt did indeed fall to NIS 236.5 million. But by year-end 2025, lease liabilities stood at NIS 966.6 million, more than 4 times financial debt, and about 97% of that lease burden sat in real estate rather than vehicles or minor equipment.

That matters for two reasons. First, it shows that Maman’s fixed burden is not mainly its bonds and bank debt. It is its leased operating footprint. Second, it shows that the company is not yet in a phase where lease obligations are naturally rolling down. The opposite is true.

The most important line in that chart is actually “other changes.” The note makes clear that this line includes, among other things, lease-contract modifications, term changes, indexation, and FX translation. So even after very material lease payments, the base liability kept growing through extensions, renewals, and adjustments.

That is not a technical footnote. It explains why leases at Maman are not just an accounting depreciation issue on right-of-use assets. They are a real cash constraint. The financing statement records NIS 112.8 million of lease principal. The lease note records NIS 155.0 million of total lease payments. Even giving full credit to the operating recovery, it is hard to describe that structure as “free flexibility.”

The current versus non-current split reinforces the same read. NIS 123.2 million of lease liabilities already sit in current maturities, with another NIS 843.4 million in long-term lease liabilities. This is not only a far-dated issue. A meaningful part of the burden sits inside the next 12 months.

What Maman Received in Return for the Bigger Lease Footprint

It is important not to oversimplify this point. Maman did not take on larger lease obligations for no reason. The report directly links the increase in right-of-use assets and lease liabilities to entering and renewing storage-site leases in logistics. In the same breath, the investment section says fixed-asset and intangible investment was used mainly for the move to a new building in logistics.

So there is a real business move here: an expanded operating footprint meant to support logistics activity. The problem is that in 2025 the return on that move still did not show up clearly enough in earnings quality or cash.

That does not prove the logistics move was wrong. It is too early for that. It does mean that in 2025 the bill is already visible, while the return is not yet equally visible. Logistics remains the largest revenue segment, but it did not produce an operating step-up that by itself would justify both the larger lease base and the higher capex.

That is also why aviation recovery, real as it was, does not resolve the point. Aviation services did bring the group back to better profitability, and operating cash flow improved. But that same cash flow also benefited from about NIS 30 million of dividends from a jointly controlled company. In other words, the money did not come only from the existing operating engine, and it certainly did not all remain inside the group after the lease layer.

Covenants Look Comfortable, but They Measure a Different Thing

Maman is comfortably inside its covenants. That is real, and it is also a real strength. The company must comply with financial tests on about NIS 136.8 million of loans and credit, of which NIS 111.2 million are bonds. Net financial debt to CAP cannot exceed 70%, and in practice it stands at 13%. Equity to assets cannot fall below 24%, or 20% for Series C, and in practice it stands at 56.2%. Equity cannot fall below NIS 200 million, and after dividends not below NIS 270 million, while in practice it is NIS 687.8 million. The rating cannot fall below BBB minus, while the company is currently rated A+ stable.

All of that is true, but it has to be read correctly. The note says explicitly that all these tests are calculated excluding IFRS 16. So covenant headroom is not an answer to the question of how much cash remains after leases. It is an answer to a different question: whether the financial-debt and equity structure, without IFRS 16, still looks safe.

That difference is critical. On the covenant basis, debt looks modest and equity looks wide. On the consolidated basis, equity is 30% of assets and leases are close to NIS 1 billion. Both pictures are true. The mistake is to use one as if it answered the other.

That also leads to the right creditor read. Covenant room is indeed wide, so this is not currently a story of imminent breach or immediate credit stress. But if cleaner residual cash does not start to emerge from the operating platform in the next few years, that wide covenant room will remain mainly a legal and accounting fact, not proof that the group has already moved into a truly comfortable cash phase.

Bottom Line

Maman in 2025 looks better than Maman in 2024. Aviation recovered, operating cash flow rose, financial debt fell, and covenants are far from pressure. But this follow-up shows why the headline is still stronger than the residual. After leases, capex, and debt service, the group’s all-in cash position is still negative.

Current thesis: Maman no longer looks like a covenant-pressure issuer, but it also does not yet look like an issuer whose operating recovery creates genuinely free residual cash after every hard commitment.

What changed versus the earlier understanding: the main article already showed that accessible cash does not come only from aviation. The sharper conclusion here is that even an improved year still did not fully cover leases, investment, and debt amortization out of the cash generated during the year.

Counter-thesis: one can argue that the caution here is too strict, because after the full Series B repayment in 2024, Maman now carries lower financial debt, very wide covenant room, and a stable rating, so the lease burden is simply a built-in feature of the model rather than a new warning sign.

What could change the read in the short to medium term: 2026 needs to show two things at once, better logistics profitability and continued stability in aviation recovery. If both happen, the lease burden will look more manageable. If cash continues to decline even in a better operating environment, the debate will shift quickly from covenants to the quality of financing flexibility.

Why this matters: in a logistics and aviation-services issuer, it is not enough for earnings to recover. Credit quality is determined by how much cash remains after warehouses, leases, and amortization. In 2025 that answer improved, but it did not yet become clean.