Bat Guano

Unencumbered refers to an asset or property that is free and clear of any encumbrances, such as creditor claims or liens. An unencumbered asset is much easier to sell or transfer than one with an encumbrance. Examples of common unencumbered assets are houses free from mortgages and other liens, cars with paid off loans/notes, or stocks purchased in a cash account.



​​​​​​https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/unencumbered.asp

C2078

That does not paint the entire picture. Liquidity gets you through the short term, but if you have to encumber a large amount of your assets to do it, then that becomes a MAJOR long term problem because the cash required to pay down those loans simply will not be there. Of course any company will do what it takes to get through the short term, but if they rack up too much debt to do it, it will become a long term issue. This is the fundamental problem that AA has, while it’s short term liquidity might be adequate, if this goes on for an extended period of time, they have over $30B in debt vs $42B (annually) or so in revenue, and this revenue number will come down big time. When you have more debt than revenue, situation gets serious.

SOMEONE is going to take a huge haircut with this, debt holders, employees, someone. Let’s all pray this thing blows off in the shortest amount of time to at least hit bottom, not there yet.

detpilot

Thanks. So for us, that'd likely be airplanes we own, tools, parts, etc? Would any of those things actually sell for close to the value they're expecting? In other words, is that $20 billion likely to only actually fetch $10 billion, while crippling the operation?

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Happyflyer

Its collateral to borrow against, like a giant pawn shop.

TFAYD

yes - it becomes an issue if you cannot serve the debt aka cannot pay your bills or the debt comes due and you cannot refinance it which is what people do - just roll it over.

every leveraged business will run into issues if the revenue stream goes a way - it is just a matter of time.

cadetdrivr

In the case of UAL, and I’m also assuming DAL, besides aircraft one of the most valuable assets is the frequent flyer program.

And, FWIW, an airline can be fully leveraged with no unencumbered assets without crippling the operation. Debt can be a useful survival tool as long as one can make the payments. One recent example is CAL prior to the merger.

JUNEBUG82

this. It’s collateral to borrow against. It’s viewed similar to cash because it can be used to raise cash.

MiLa

This was reported in the Wall Street Journal. UAL with $8B Delta with $5B but UAL has higher debt.