Chimpy

gahhhdamnnnnn I can’t “LIKE” this enough 😂

hammer pants

Tough call man. Good luck either way. Just wanted to say I love your YouTube page. I
say quit the whole flying thing and move to LA, try to make it as a cinematographer 😂😂😂

Chimpy

haha, thanks. There’s a good chance I regret the move for the next few years unless I can upgrade soon. It really is a shame what happened to this place, the best job I’ll ever have….(had)

zoooropa

Disclaimer, I wish nothing bad for the Spirit crews. Ive been through BK's and IMSL's and all of it really sucks. This is just math and as most, if not all of you, know the math is really, really bad.

If you look at NK's liabilities coming up rapidly, $1.1 Billion due next month to pay off the 8% notes, there just isn't a solution short of a miracle. That miracle being someone comes in and buys the bonds for pennies on the dollar but they will only do that in return for something and that something isn't there because the bonds are maturing. The only reason anyone buys distressed debt at a discount is the coupon ("interest") is still paid. So if you buy $1b in bonds at a 70% discount paying 8% you could possibly (assuming a lot of default risk) recoup your original investment over a couple years because you are collecting 8% on the $1b even though you paid $300M. These bonds don't have any coupon payments remaining so nobody is going to buy them. The other miracle is somebody buys them at a steep discount in exchange for a large percentage of ownership in the airline. That process isn't going to happen outside of BK.

Speaking of BK, it isn't a magic shower where you enter dirty and walk out squeaky clean. It is a torture chamber and if you don't enter with some cohesive (and more importantly FUNDED) plan to exit as a profitable entity you don't enter to reorganize you enter to liquidate so you can protect yourselves from litigation from the $3b you owe to lenders (no concern for public stockholders, they get nothing).

Can NK come up with the cash themselves? No and here is why...

First and foremost we are all in the business of carrying passengers. Your total fare per passenger is down yoy nearly 16% to $108 per pax. Keep in mind F9 is barely staying aflot from a net profit perspective with $125 per pax but that is 15% more profit per pax and we are growing capacity by low double digits (albiet slowing down according to recent news). On top of the 15% lower rev number, NK CASM is 9.7% higher than F9 (7.36 v 6.71). I don't bring up F9 to be a dick but if NK is going to get debtor in possession financing (aka your new Daddy in BK) they need to show a profitable path upon exit. The current numbers only show things getting worse, not better, in the short term.

Second, spirit announced the delay in aircraft deliveries that were supposed to come 2025 and 2026 to 2030 and 2031. What that announcement didn't say is spirit sold their delivery positions for 2027 and 2028 for 36 aircraft to a third party and that entity has agreed to rent those back to spirit but that means spirit will have zero SLB good guys for that two year period. That is a couple hundred mil a year they have been living on. The announcement also did not include the fact that spirit has no financing in place for aircraft deliveries beyond 2029 (per their own filing). They had 52 aircraft on the books, airbus did them a hugie and returned pre delivery payments (that haven't been made yet) to the tune of almost $200 million (this is totally different than the $200 milly from pratt). Basically spirit's outstanding airbus delivery schedule for the next eight years just went from 101 new planes to maybe 36 (assuming the 2027-28 positions they sold are actually rented back to NK, I use the term "rent" on purpose because it is technically different than leasing). This is referred to as "burning the furniture to heat the house". Your lifeblood is carrying passengers inside of airplanes over the long term but sometimes, when things go really bad, you need to tap into whatever equity you have to stop the short term bleeding. Spirit has leveraged every single future aircraft delivery in some, way, shape or form to generate short term liquidity.

Third, cash on hand (and this is where things go sideways really quick). Liquidity decreased yoy from $1.23B down to $845M, a decrease of 31%. You owe $1.1 B next month and you have $845 cash on hand. You do have a $300M revolver that you can tap (they just extended the maturity one year into 2026 just in case) but then you pay off the notes and go to zero cash on hand. Here is why you can't do that...

Fourth, credit card hold back. When passengers buy a ticket using a card the credit card company pays the airline a portion of the ticket upon payment and the balance upon actual travel (aka "the hold back"). According to the recent Q, the current holdback is 0% which is great but it can be triggered by liquidity covenants and if triggered it is around $500M. So, thats bad.

While typing I thought of another path to paying off the debt due next month. Spirit (more than likely already has done this) goes to the bond holders and says "hey, you can get zero if we file or you can get 35 cents on the dollar (15 cents?)". The bond holders will likely ask for some warrants or something with at least a potential to recoup some of their loss. If we don't hear or read anything of spirit "working it out" (parlance for screwing over your lenders) very soon, then a BK announcement is imminent.

What does BK look like? Having been through two different airline BK's and three different restructurings outside of BK I can tell you this. If spirit is filing (assuming they have not worked out the September debt payment) they most definitely already have a bk firm and the most definitely are shopping around for a "white knight" to enter bk together with a preplanned, financed exit plan. Spirit as a whole today isn't working. Parts of spirit definitely work. The preplanned exit would rely upon the white knight to finance everything short term in exchange for majority (if not complete) ownership in the long term. The long term entity is bigger than spirit than the acquiring airline today but you can expect some of spirit no longer existing. Indigo knows this game VERY well but you can't rule out two of the legacies that would love to see spirit gone while hating they idea of another ULCC getting stronger (one legacy comes to mind quickly, the only other one with cash could also enter the mix, perhaps they both join forces because it helps them in the long term).

If you look at the most recent Ch 11's that included a merger upon exit there was in fact an IMSL at the end but it sure as heck wasn't friendly to the BK native seniority list. You can't be stapled but it looks something like "nine of them, two of you, nine of them, three of you", and so on. You are eventually on a bigger list but your seniority is diluted.

I am no expert, I have just eaten this sandwich before and I can read and do math above a fifth grade level. The bright spot for those most impacted is this will all be known sooner rather than later. This is literally happening now. Watch the news for the remainder of August. Hope for a work out (still A LOT of hurdles remain because 2026 looks a heck of a lot like 2025 with regard to debt payments and the other lenders will get lawyered the f up as they see previous lenders get hammered) and prepare for a prepackaged BK. And why did I waste five minutes reading the filing and five more typing this? I'm bored and I actually enjoy reading the recent filings of several airlines, its part curiousity and part survival. The financing moves being made right now are actually pretty fascinating.

FriendlyPilot

First of all, I sincerely hope NK is bought in whole by another airline so that the jobs can be maintained. UA, DL, WN are the most likely candidates, but unfortunately I don't see that happening.

Spirit's market cap is $300M. The operating entity has no real value. Nobody in the investor world thinks NK is going to be an ongoing concern. If someone wanted to buy them it would have happened. $300M was 10 days of cashflow for United and Delta in Q2. No one wants the entity because of the debt they would have to acquire. Assets are a different scenario.

Someone buying the debt (junk bonds) at a discount is the worst possible scenario. They aren't going to let their investment go to zero. Their exit strategy is going to be to sell the assets to whoever will buy them for a profit. They don't care about the ongoing company, just their return.

Also there isn't going to be a SLI in this scenario. Those planes will possibly end up at another airline after the inspections are done, etc but the pilots aren't going to "go with them". Merger policy is designed when an airline buys a whole or part of an operating airline or fragmented airline, not an asset purchase like planes, gates etc. NK will likely be an asset sale, even if one airline buys most of the assets, which is unlikely. The planes aren't really the valuable asset here, but instead its the gates and slots at slot-restricted airports. NK has already given back their future orders, so they weren't really worth what people thought there were worth, or they would have kept them to help in being acquired. Now any airline can just go grab those future orders, and its likely they have already been acquired.

The combination of the engine issues, legacies going after leisure travel post-covid, the stalled/failed B6 merger, and a lack of foresight with NK management to pivot the product to changing economic conditions, is why this ship is going down so fast.

The good news is for pilots that you will all end up with pilot jobs at other airlines. I hope ALPA makes a push for preferential hiring at UA and DL, which will be the airlines hiring the most pilots over the next few years.

Good luck to all of you.

Chimpy

as far as diluting seniority, many of us senior folk are voluntarily stapling ourselves to the bottom of Legacy Lists so anything at all would be better than starting over.

CatPilot1

Too many Wall St guru pilots.. they know everything, but then gave up millions of dollars a year to be pilots instead! With all this knowledge you’ll should be worth 10s of millions like me!

golf59

There are no bonds due next month. They are due September 2025.

The revolving credit facility is only extended IF we refinance the bonds that are due, by September 20th of this year.

Chimpy

I think you quoted the wrong person

APCHCLIMB

that’s what I’ve been saying all along…. Most pilots don’t even know their memory items.

But yet finances, corporate strategy, vaccine technology, investment advice, nuclear weapon tactics, how to become a billionaire in ten steps, etc. no problem.