I've recently started looking into Flybe (LON:FLYB) and am quite puzzled about this point at its history and what's next.
The company is a serial disappointer of its shareholders and the SP has collapsed from 130p in 2015 down to 30p this Wednesday when its latest profit warning was announced.
Negatives
- Company has a big debt pile, sitting at 64m or 88% of its market cap. Caused by the purchases of their own aircrafts in the last year, when it had 62.2m net cash.
- Years of bad management decisions, with the last one from the previous CEO's steps to overreach for capacity. Some of its biggest problems lie with too many planes and seats that are not filled, making costs balloon and load factor crashing to 69.6% at year end, down 3%.
- 2.7% short interest means the sharks are circling, making the falls steeper.
- No dividend, big spread, illiquid small-cap.
- Very low stockopedia rank, doesn't pass any screens. Health trend of 3.
- Profit weighting from last years suggest H2 is always worse than H1, with last year H1 showing a 15.9 PBT but H2 showing a 22.6m loss. As this year's estimated PBT is 5-10m it is uncertain how it's not going to be another loss making year.
Positives
- Recent bankruptcies of Monarch, Air Berlin and Alitalia have created a big market gap that FLYB can benefit from. Top it up with Ryanair's cancellations of 700,000 of flights, FLYB has less competition in some places and an opportunity to take more market share.
- New board is in place, with the CEO bringing a wealth of experience with her and a solid turnaround plan ready to address some of its horrible capacity issue, badly designed website and customer experience.
- 6 aircrafts planned to be returned back to their lessor within 2017/18. That will be a big boost to cost cutting and reduce capacity growth.
- New flights announced from London for next summer, up 80% to last year. Almost 2/3 of their routes are flying with no competition.
New CEO
Christine Ourmières-Widener is now at the helm of the company for the past 10 months, by having a quick look at her resume you can quickly see she's a big player in aviation with vast experience in CityJet, KLM, Air France etc.
She seems to be taking all the right steps to bring profitability back, which takes time and should not be…
