Brussels Airlines future and financial perspective

[Inquirer]

Hi,

19 million /400000 = 47,5 euro per pax ?

I know this means nothing but just a number..

I dont follow you: it's not FOR 400,000 passengers, but AS FROM 400,000 passengers annually (excluding transfer, so the Indians won't benefit from it either, it seems, only airlines currently having a large local footprint and they happen to be the 3 Belgian airlines).

[cathay belgium]

I stated it immediately,this means NOTHING !

But could be interpreted as from 400000 pax you get state aid for giving the region economic support or blabla... This means once you get at this point an airliner would be getting around 47 euro per pax support!
This is hughe.. and become less when you are bigger..

This means nothing, but I meant they don't need to be giving support on this way, the 400000 pax is just a stupid way to exclude others, a more straight reason but more obvious would be , we give money on airliners with red dots on their tail
Hidden Xmas present, that you and I and non-aviationlovers need to pay because the people which we voted for are giving it away... For the wrong reasons...
Idem FR at Crl and so on... Just state aid in general.. excl. The reasons mentioned before..
There is no real reason to me to give such aid to SN nor JAF nor... Ford nor Suez- who will pay the disamantle of the nucleair power plants once they done their job and the money is gone?,storage of the used ... Nor the empty churches nor... Way off topic just to make a point..
The government is making way too many wrong choices imo... This is just one them,..
If a private company is healthy enough to survive they don't need it, if they aren't they don't deserve it..
The gap would be filled well enough when someone can do it better, should I like this .. No!
Would it be fair? Normally yes,... If the playing field would be equal ! hello europa?! Emirates ?!
Better take care if this instead playing santa!
And..
If it's needed for other reasons.. we better build a nationalised ones, they don't need to make money, we accept the losses for a global reason.. Like trains, Sabena... until we come at a point of ... Pfffff...

CXB

[fcw]

I stated it immediately,this means NOTHING !
But could be interpreted as from 400000 pax you get state aid for giving the region economic support or blabla... This means once you get at this point an airliner would be getting around 47 euro per pax support!
This is hughe.. and become less when you are bigger..

CXB, it is NOT 47€/pax.
Here are my back of fag packet figures:
Security cost at BRU 100M€ for 20m pax so 5€/pax.
The governement gives 20M to the airport, so cost goes down to 80M€ or 4€/pax.
However airlines will still pay 5€ for the first 400.000pax, 4€ for the next 600.000pax, 3€ between 1 and 2M pax and nothing for all pax exceeding 2M.
So the airport gets their 80M€.
BruAir will still charge all its passengers 5€, but they will pay 16M€ less to the airport, so the loose "only" 30 to 35M€ instead of 45 to 50.
Capiche?

[cathay belgium]

Euh... Fcw fwiw... I know it's not 47,5 euro a pax duh !
Please read everything...
It's just A calculation, which proves nothing ... but something where I can put my opinion on ..
Besides when IF in the surreal world, SN would only transsport this amount if pax.. My calculation does mean something but they don't such as my calcalation stands for..
And now.. Read everything in it's written context !
Capiche ? Corn... just a joke my friend and beloved luchtzakker !
Happy wknd!
CXB

[Flanker2]

The EU will not allow any form of state aid to domestic airlines without prior approval.
Only regional entities are allowed to do this.

It will work for a while, until the EU will force the airlines to pay it back years later. Ah well, by then who knows if SN will still be around. Good for SN though that they get yet another Christmas present from the government, after all they get screwed by them in the form of social security tax, so I'm happy that they are helped.

While I congratulate the government for taking responsibility to help a major employer, which is a great thing and probably only motivated by upcoming elections, Belgium needs broader actions across all sectors, especially for real SME's of less than 100 employees.
I don't believe in wealth redistribution: Belgium and other European countries need to stop the practice of levying a lot of taxes to redistribute them under the form of subsidies, welfare, OCMW/CPAS. It would make far more sense to reduce tax pressure to 20% and make everyone who has a pair of hands work, legally. We also need to stop this EU from growing any bigger, we don't need a government above the government, motivated only by greedy postholders who don't give a darn about Europe.

As for SN, this state aid will help them get through the winter, but after?
Their business model needs a review but there is no money to make big changes. They are at the mercy of Ryanair and Turkish and other airlines, who will eat them up piece by piece, until there is nothing left.
If left like this, SN will die an agonizing death, so maybe it's worth taking a risk, even if they lose a few months of lifeline? That's what the armchair CEO in me would do anyways.

The last thing I want to read is that they are wasting resources to add another A320 for Europe. Oh wait... they are :clap: You've got to be kidding me?

[Flanker2]

For the first time I looked at the consolidated balance sheet of SN Air Holdings for 2012. I didn't bother to look until now, assuming that last year's forgiving of the start-up loan would have ejected their net assets up.
If you look at SN Air Holding's consolidated balance sheet for 2012, we see balance sheet insolvency, ie, negative net assets for 10 millions... which isn't dramatic as long as SN continues to repay its debt.
Some of that debt is with parent company LH, so that helps... but the other creditors may start to worry seriously now, as SN is missing its targets year after year.

Adding in the negative 30-35 millions for SN and probably another 3 for Korongo, corrected by 1 million for the sale of the BAe's, SN's net worth will decline to somewhere around minus 50 millions... with Ryanair and Vueling coming in BRU, TK swallowing their profits in Africa and increasing costs, well... it will all be up to the creditor's goodwill, but I don't think that they will survive the fall of 2014. For me it's not conceivable that they would still be adding an A320 at this moment.

What about the Club Med contract? Isn't that expiring somewhere in April?

This is a recent article that I didn't see mentioned here: http://maximroelen.blogspot.be/2013/10/ ... g-its.html

I see a lot of extra low frequency leisure for the summer. ATH, is very questionable for me
Ah well, they might as well end strong, unless LH decides to go all-in, which I don't think they will do anymore.

[HighInTheSky]

This is a recent article that I didn't see mentioned here: http://maximroelen.blogspot.be/2013/10/ ... g-its.html

Well, given that it is written by our member Romax, I think you can say that it has been discussed here. Maybe not in total, but subject by subject?

[B.Inventive]

At the beginning of the year, SN claimed that the loss for 2013 would be between 0 and 20 million euros.
At present, they speak of a 25-30 million loss with subsidies, 46 million without them ...
Some discrepancy !

Indeed, but they had two costly strikes this year: one from the ground handlers, one from the pilots.

not to mention the continuing mx problems... wet lease budgets were exceeded already in March this year...
Great for the image, and as opposed to the strike, something that will happen over and over again as long as they don't change tactics in the long term view. (And they only intend to change anything untill 2017 so that's 3 more years of wetleases to go, HiFly will be happy...)

[FlightMate]

So apparently, the losses will be around 30-40m euros instead of breakeven.
What about next year? Did they review their ambitions?
Are they still talking about better results than this year?

[sean1982]

So apparently, the losses will be around 30-40m euros instead of breakeven.
What about next year? Did they review their ambitions?
Are they still talking about better results than this year?

Is that with or without the State aid?

[OO-ITR]

So apparently, the losses will be around 30-40m euros instead of breakeven.
What about next year? Did they review their ambitions?
Are they still talking about better results than this year?

you probably mean loss of 20m euros for 2013.
The plan is (was?) to be breakeven in 2014

[fcw]

So apparently, the losses will be around 30-40m euros instead of breakeven.
What about next year? Did they review their ambitions?
Are they still talking about better results than this year?

you probably mean loss of 20m euros for 2013.
The plan is (was?) to be breakeven in 2014

From the horses mouth (Mr D.): 45-50m loss before state aid.
(I remember young Flanker being shot down on this forum for predicting this a couple of months ago.)

[Inquirer]

One pertinent question which hasn't been raised yet and which needs to be, IMHO: the result being discussed and much commented on here, is it operational, or net?
I don't know what other non-operational revenues they have, but they are definitely not to be neglected if you see the average difference between operational and net over the last couple of years, so in the absense of that, there's not much substance to this discussion, I am afraid.

What I can see however is a significant improvement on last year's financial results, so my personal take of the matter is that they are indeed on the right track back to profitability, possibly as soon as next year even, which is what they claim too. I know it's popular to think managers are all idiots, but based on what we get from information and what we can verify via alternative means, I'd say they are indeed on track.

Given they seem to have managed to turn the corner, I don't share any of the doom and gloom which some here are posting; in fact, I wouldn't be surprised even to see them expand again already next year in Europe, as they claim to be operating near to profitability on their European flights and are in need of another stepping stone to make it back into the black, something which is more easily achieved by growing the profitable part of the business further.

Remember financial results always lag on any situational change, which is why I put great stress on evolutions and trends, rather than figures alone, be it at Brussels Airlines or indeed at that other airline which is often debated here and for which I predicted the need for very drastic re-orientation well before it indeed came to be. Those who joined that discussion will know what I mean.

Finally, allow me to say that when a private company enjoyed shareholder's backing while posting a result like Brussels Airlines did last year, then you can be pretty sure of a continued backing from those shareholders based on this kind of encouraging results and the positive trend they show in the near future too, so whatever scenario some tend to see as potentially meaningful enough to post here, one shouldn't forget that it has a much lower probability of ever materializing than any of the similar scenario's from last year.

Other than that, I'd just like to conclude with the remark that I sincerely hope that all of you have more social and enjoyable things to do than to post about some airlines' financial results at 4AM on boxing day!

Happy Holidays!

[FlightMate]

You can be happy that they 'turned the corner', but from my perspective, they went from a profitable airline to a huge loss-making one. Now they are on their way to get back where they were 10 years ago.
Let's not forget that (most of) the crisis is behind us. So did they really improve anything? Or is it just the global economy which is getting better?

Anyway, I'd like to see them being profitable again, and I'd like if someone could share the plans for "behind 2014" ie, breakeven in 2014 then? And then? Good profits afterwards? Or back in the red? Status Quo?
Difficult to guess the future of course, but having a good business plan is a start. And if the managers haven't got any optimism, then that doesn't look good indeed...

[Flanker2]

Dear Inquirer, I admire your optimism in the face of the obvious downfall. fcw, I appreciate you backing me up.

Regarding SN's 2013 results, I don't think that they have improved anything. I think that their smaller loss is owed to pure luck: a small decrease in fuel prices and a stronger euro have contributed to a cost reduction of around 25-30 million euro's.

The EUR-USD exchange rates were at an average of about 1.28USD/EUR in 2012. In 2013, this average is around 1.33 USD/EUR. This equals a 3.9% reduction in costs on fuel, leases, aircraft parts traded in USD, heavy maintenance, owed only to the EUR/USD exchange rate.
If we consider that 40% of SN's cost base of about 1 billion euro's was in US dollars, exchange rates alone would have improved SN's earnings by 16 million euro's.

Add at least another 10 million for the lower fuel prices.

The other 10-15 million euro's that they managed to decrease in losses (from their 90 some million loss in 2012) could be owed to anything from increased revenue, reduction of overhead to year-on-year differences caused by several factors such as investments, new routes, etc...


http://www.iata.org/whatwedo/Publishing ... ChartC.png

If the EUR/USD and fuel prices stayed the same, they would have been looking at a loss of about -75 million euro's, which is barely any improvement, but yes, one could call it a stable result.

For 2014, my sad forecast is a 100 million euro loss before state-aid (amounts ytd, but I predict that they will try to double the state-aid ), at stable fuel and exchange rates, which will seriously impact their cash flow.
At the end of 2014, in my opinion, their equity/net assets position (assets minus debt) will be beyond 100 million euro's in the negative. As SN has no assets such as aircraft that the banks can resell to recoup the lost debt, they will be more eager to cut their losses sooner than later.
To avoid that and maintain the banks' trust, Gustin's team have to present a budget in the positive in 2014, even though they would need a miracle to achieve it. But towards the end of 2014, the banks will realize that the budget will not be met and decide to pull the plug.

The only things that could keep SN alive through 2014 would be a full bank guarrantee or equity injection from LH. But after 4 years of stable losses at SN and a deteriorating business environment, LH can't easily justify either of those to their shareholders.

[teddybAIR]

Last years EBIT was -91m€ which was then corrected with "uitzonderlijke opbrengsten en uitzonderlijke kosten" resulting in "only" -60m€ EBIT. By far the largest contributor to the uitzonderlijke opbrengsten is a single line called "andere uitzonderlijke opbrengsten" that amounted 37.500.000€ on the dot. The round figure suggests the nature of the exceptional revenue, but I'm not an expert in brussels airlines' financial history.

[OO-ITR]

So apparently, the losses will be around 30-40m euros instead of breakeven.
What about next year? Did they review their ambitions?
Are they still talking about better results than this year?

you probably mean loss of 20m euros for 2013.
The plan is (was?) to be breakeven in 2014

From the horses mouth (Mr D.): 45-50m loss before state aid.
(I remember young Flanker being shot down on this forum for predicting this a couple of months ago.)

the figures that im talking about are the planned results of course. Not the actual results...
Also from the horses mouth, but Mr. G

[Inquirer]

Dear Inquirer, I admire your optimism in the face of the obvious downfall.

Now, let's not add predictions to any conjecture, shall we?
I remember last year in November you were predicting them to go out of business already a few months later, only to be shown wrong by the fact that Lufthansa came to the rescue with a cash line, something which shows once again that as long as you're not at the table of any of their meetings, there's really not much meaningful you can say about their future other than that they will have to be temporarily funded by external means, something which is currently happening.

If the EUR/USD and fuel prices stayed the same, they would have been looking at a loss of about -75 million euro's, which is barely any improvement.

IF seems to be a word you regularly use to turn a wrong prediction into a positive outcome for you, so I have noticed. It generally means you didn't get it right too, then.

BTW- note how you are assuming a lot of things in order to fit your version of reality.
Personally I'd be reluctant to assume they weren't hedged on both the dollar and the fuel for most of their needs prior to their depreciation over the year, something which would mean they may not yet have been able to fully benefit from the improvements to the more favourable exchange rate or the fuel prices then.
In fact, the best may yet come on those fronts.

As I've said: the trend is clearly there and it's heading in the right direction: it amazes me you even want to argue with that currently unquantifiable but definitely qualifiable fact, as if you somehow wished it wasn't true. With an eye on the trend, I'd say chances of shareholder cutting off the line, after all they've been through already, are fairly slim.

[fcw]

BTW- note how you are assuming a lot of things in order to fit your version of reality.
Personally I'd be reluctant to assume they weren't hedged on both the dollar and the fuel for most of their needs prior to their depreciation over the year, something which would mean they may not yet have been able to fully benefit from the improvements to the more favourable exchange rate or the fuel prices then.
In fact, the best may yet come on those fronts.

Hedging fuel is often misunderstood. It is not buying fuel at a fixed price, it is more like an Insurance which will pay you back when the fuel prices exceed a preset value.
If the price goes down you still take advantage of it.

As I've said: the trend is clearly there and it's heading in the right direction: it amazes me you even want to argue with that currently unquantifiable but definitely qualifiable fact, as if you somehow wished it wasn't true. With an eye on the trend, I'd say chances of shareholder cutting off the line, after all they've been through already, are fairly slim.

As you are a "De Tijd" fan you probably read the article today saying that the government will already inject 15mio € in BruAir this year and will not await approval of the EU. To me this clearly indicates the panic button has been hit and the injection is necessary to save BruAir.

[FlightMate]

Hedging fuel is often misunderstood. It is not buying fuel at a fixed price, it is more like an Insurance which will pay you back when the fuel prices exceed a preset value.
If the price goes down you still take advantage of it.

Indeed, even if they hedged their fuel wrong (ie at 100USD and prices go down to 70USD), they will still benefit from the very low prices of the fuel. They might even wish they had it wrong