khergan

Especially given the fact that AS just bought an entire airline, including its WB airplanes and WB order book, for $1.9 billion.

RJSAviator76

....causing their credit rating to get lowered to junk thanks to assuming HA's debt.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...to-borrow-more

khergan

Oh, I'm not making any judgment as to the wisdom of the decision, just saying there's a lot of other things that $2.5 billion could go towards to improve the operation other than stock buybacks.

Planetrain

Spending the money before Elliott can steal it. Defensive against a leveraged buyout ala Ichan and TWA.

RJSAviator76

We all have a love-hate relationship with stock buybacks. For example, buying stock when the price is this low is a good thing. Buying stock when it was overpriced, not so much, especially when you fail to invest in your business.

I do find this codeshare with Icelandair amusing... SWAPA will be measuring PDEW's on these. Once they reach certain level, SWA will have to put our metal on it...

Standbyzeros

Iceland has become quite the redneck riviera so that could happen sooner than later. I’m not sure how many from the US of diabeetus make a return visit, but it seems they’re all intent on going at least once.

e6bpilot

The announcements were lame, underwhelming, and totally predictable. Announcing that you are spending all your cash reserves on stock buybacks is, quite simply, beyond the pale. That was the real announcement. The rest was window dressing.

The only reason to buy back a chunk of underperforming stock is to have the dual effect of bribing institutional investors to allow our crop of underperforming airline executives to keep their jobs and to increase the value of shares paid to execs, BOD, and our illustrious chair, who is still under contract for 2 more years after his departure.

This is corporate raider stuff, which is ironic, because I thought that Elliott were supposed to be raiding us, but it turns out the raiders were inside the house the whole time.

So choose your poison, not that any of us will get to choose. At this point, I am willing to take a chance on the unknown rather than this group of criminals.

e6bpilot

Yep. This was a huge gamble by Alaska. If anyone can pull it off, it's them. They overpaid for VA and they overpaid for HA. In both cases, they took out a damaged but still worthy competitor.

WHACKMASTER

Or another MOU 🙄

……in which case I’ll be the first to call for heads to roll.

WHACKMASTER

That’s exactly the way I’m leaning but I think we’re fooked either way. Maybe SkyWest will buy us(?)