Air Canada Now and Future – Facts Vs Fear MongeringAs fear mongering spreads on, few facts to keep in mind.
Different times: March 2020: - The world didn’t understand COVID and there were no vaccinations (base structures).
- Govts had limited means to control the spread, other than grounding the world.
- In the mean-time, Govts printed 100s of billions of free money.
- Govts could print the money as Economy was at cycle peak and COVID became the reason for expected (almost much awaited by few) recession.
- Bad luck for Canada, Govt had spent a lot more in the previous years too.
- Cargo revenue was ~4% of total revenue for Air Canada
Dec 2021: - Scientists understand the most they ever had about COVID. New variants are reality and scientists community is able to respond very promptly.
- Base vaccinations are in our bodies. (Unvaccinated will always be at risk).
- Pharmas are working on upgrading vaccinations in much shorter cycles. We will be taking upgrades for few years like MS Windows upgrades. (Read ‘Sapiens’ by Yuval Noah).
- With Govts/Central Banks dealing with large debts, it won’t be easy decision to lock down economies esp long lock downs.
- Cargo revenue is going up by 300% with a higher profit margin than before, because of higher yield and volume.
Airlines: Capacity: Are operating with much lower capacities than 2019 and airlines like Air Canada have managed to substantially lower their fixed cost. Better airlines can ramp up capacity quickly if need be.
Operating cost: Like I have said before, two important aspects in Airlines (and in other businesses too) to stay profitable are lesser proportion of fixed costs and agility to reduce variable costs if demand decreases. It’s this agility better airlines have prepared for since 2010. Hence, Air Canada was cash flow positive at 35% capacity (of 2019).
Revenue: Oct and Nov have been flying with capacity close to 2019 in US. That money is in pocket. So far there are no obvious changes to flights schedules in North America. British Airlines re-started flights to South Africa after a short gap. Adding testing to international arrivals in Canada is okay too. Problem was 2 weeks of hotel stay. But if one has to stay home till the test results come (usually 18-24 hours), that is doable. Govt has to be advertise up to 3 days to cover themselves .
COVID and lockdown: There are very few economies which can afford a full lockdown. Planned dynamic travel restrictions are smart ways to managing but at the end of the day, only vaccines will be saviours. More and more news is indicating mild symptoms due to omicron esp in the vaccinated. Canada is one of the most vaccinated country (almost 90% of eligible population) in the world with 5+ kids and 50+ adult boosters coming as we speak.
Air Canada Revenue: Passenger revenue: Oct and Nov have been flying with capacity close to Aug/Sept (positive EBITDA months). That is money in pocket. Since Dec 1, one can see more flights have been added (
https://flightaware.com/live/fleet/ACA?;offset=60;order=ident;sort=ASC). Maximum # flights in air are 80+ observed between 1000-1300 hours. Another change is that more than 50% of these are WideBody planes (46). Conservatively speaking, to calculate fleet utilization here is a simple math.
Average # planes in air Avg daily utilization (hrs pre-covid) Fleet deployed
Widebody = 40 15.5 hrs 40/15.5*24 =
62 Narrowbody= 30 10.5 hrs 30/10.5*24 =
69 Total = 70 129 A total of 129 aircraft (62 WB and 69 NB) are actively flying since many days/weeks. Interesting fact is, as per (
https://www.aircanada.com/ca/en/aco/home/fly/onboard/fleet.html#/) Air Canada has 77 WB aircraft and 129 NB (Incl Rouge). This means a very high utilization of WB fleet. 63% of the total fleet is deployed with a huge bias towards WB fleet (62/77 = 80%). Precovid, total fleet was 250. So they are flying as per their projected Q4 capacity target (53% of 2019).
At the same time a quick check on the ticket price I did few days back (YYZ-SFO, YYZ-YUL, YYZ-YVR, YYZ/YUL/YVR-DEL) is still the same. Some routes (e.g. Delhi) are sold out on many days. No let up in ticket prices indicates strong demand.
Cargo: Global supply chain issues and domestic (due to Vancouver flooding) issues are keeping air cargo business growing. These won’t be solved anytime soon. E.g. Vancouver experienced lot of wild fires over summer which has eroded forest cover on mountains surrounding highway and train tracks. With rain (and with snow in coming months), washouts are increasing. Though this will be back in control over time, but time sensitive cargo is moving to Air Cargo and will remain so. 2022 estimates for Cargo are $2B, highest ever in Air Canada’s history with very strong profit margins.
Loyalty and credit card revenue: Enough as been said about this. JP Morgan credit card is on top of it.
Travel restrictions: If international travel growth is restricted, it will shift to more domestic (and to some extent US and SUN) travel. Even domestic travel is restricted to vaccinated only. Even with current levels of international travel, results will be better than Q3.
Capacity and Cost: Flexible cost structure will enable Air Canada to ramp down or ramp up capacity quickly. An Airline which can make money with low (lower than 2019) capacity/demand will be a winner. Air Canada qualifies for this. 2022 demand curve is much higher than 2021.
Outlook While shorts and vested parties have managed to control the stock price in recent months, this won’t last long. Truth will come out soon. And for bankruptcy wishful thinking, keep dreaming . All this fear mongering led the March 2020 crash and Air Canada came out of it strongly.