RE:RE:RE:RE:As we approach February 11th859, these are the reasons: #1, we know how they operated the past 5-7 years with too much debt - both visible and not - and see how that turned out. #2, at 4.7B, that's too much debt for BA considering the other "liabilities" generally - if the company was 100% owned by a very rich rational businessperson, he wouldn't operate the company that way - he would bring the debt down. #3, with that much debt, most of the cashflow goes to interest. Reduce the debt, not only you also reduce interests paid so its a win win. #4, you do the basic spreadsheet math, there is no impact on share price if you reduce the debt and correspondingly increase equity as the EV remains constant. Realistically? The EV should be much higher and its not because the debt is too high. Lower the debt, EV goes up, share price goes up. Plus you can actually generate cashflow So the effect is opposite to what you suggest IMO. The reason the share price went down when they issued shares before is the same as when they issued debt: company clearly had serious negative cashflow issues. YMMV.