No end in sight for the huge losses at Norwegian.

https://media.uk.norwegian.com/pressrel ... er-2863948

https://media.uk.norwegian.com/document ... 2019-87563


With all these poor results over the years, I don't understand how people are still willing to invest in Norwegian.

B747forever wrote:

No end in sight for the huge losses at Norwegian.

https://media.uk.norwegian.com/pressrel ... er-2863948

https://media.uk.norwegian.com/document ... 2019-87563


With all these poor results over the years, I don't understand how people are still willing to invest in Norwegian.

Well, Norwegian has taken certain steps lately to try and better their results and the result, while still bad, was better than various analysists had expected.

Mortyman wrote:

B747forever wrote:

No end in sight for the huge losses at Norwegian.

https://media.uk.norwegian.com/pressrel ... er-2863948

https://media.uk.norwegian.com/document ... 2019-87563


With all these poor results over the years, I don't understand how people are still willing to invest in Norwegian.

Well, Norwegian has taken certain steps lately to try and better their results and the result, while still bad, was better than various analysists had expected.

Those changes can't come fast enough. With today's results it seems they have already burned through half of those 3 billion NOK from earlier this year.

It's not that bad, considering. Heading into summer (MAX aside), it should be better.

If I interpret that correctly:
- EBIT -2,263 is worse than ever [excl other losses/(gains)-net]
- net loss -1,489.4 is 3122 % more than last year and more than last year cumulatively
- they paid negative taxes
- other random gains and expenses complicate comparison
- unit cost seems improving significantly (8%)

I refrain to predict whether it is enough. I hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

Given that the MAX will probably not fly again until at least August will surely impact on Q2 and Q3.

How long can they hold on.

My guess is they are focusing on some improvements and cost cuts which are still sort of "friendly". The question is ... are they enough? Don't they come too late? Other than the closure of bases in Spain, 737 in USA and FCO they claim they are reviewing the whole network but no big changes have been done.

In an internal meeting held by different departments of the company, one responsible role confirmed:

"It is clear that, today, we have too many aircraft, and even more in order. Think about this for a second : we have a total of 26 Max grounded (18 delivered already, and 8 still in Seattle) but we still can operate our routes network with minor disruptions! Is this a good thing? We also had too many routes that were not profitable. Some routes have actually never been profitable"

When they were expanding heavily the long haul routes, many observed they were growing way too fast. For a good couple of years they were just not reacting to the evidence of the huge debt the airline created quarter after quarter, and everything was justified on the expansion.

My humble guess (probably wrong) is that the real optimisation they claim they are doing isn't targeting the real problem: long haul operation and its associated costs. They probably put too many efforts there and if they truly downsize the 787 fleet it would be quite painful. Isn't Norwegian already nearly as big in long haul as it is in short haul? They will probably go the last round with expanding the 787 and its routes (from Arlanda now to Asia maybe?) but my fear is again this will only cause more dispersion of the network, less revenue, more costs to the operation, associated marketing, etc.

The whole project is as cool as rather... amateur.

Investors seems to look at the numbers more favourably: The stock increases by 5.8% on the Oslo Stock Exchange

Don’t forget Easter is late this year so it didn’t fall in the 1st quarter . Loads of people travel in these holidays especially from London etc . Lots of airlines show bad figures when this happens

Norwegian or its assets will likely soon end up being picked off by IAG. They'll go through the Summer but fuel is rising and they are a leisure airline with high costs.

f4f3a wrote:

Don’t forget Easter is late this year so it didn’t fall in the 1st quarter . Loads of people travel in these holidays especially from London etc . Lots of airlines show bad figures when this happens

Except the airlines that made profits with Easter not being in Q1 aren’t on the edge of survival. All the hoopla about Norwegian changing to make a profit was smoke and mirrors. They continue to bleed cash where other airlines thrive. Selling you product below cost in mass quantities is never a recipe for success

Norwegians problem is that it has no clear vision in expansion. It seemsed their transatlantic expansion was here and there as then everywhere. Point to point traffic is difficult to manage in a highly seasonable market. When other airlines are charging business class in the same fares Nowegian charges for premier economy you know things would go wrong. I often though without a proper business class product Norwegian would be at the competition disadvantage. Yes the freedom of cheap one way fare is very attractive and fills the hole of a market. The inability to lure premier passengers is a worry and will continue to be a weakness in transatlantic LCC carriers. Anyone wants to step in following Norwegian must realise this.

a350lover wrote:

My guess is they are focusing on some improvements and cost cuts which are still sort of "friendly". The question is ... are they enough? Don't they come too late? Other than the closure of bases in Spain, 737 in USA and FCO they claim they are reviewing the whole network but no big changes have been done.

In an internal meeting held by different departments of the company, one responsible role confirmed:

"It is clear that, today, we have too many aircraft, and even more in order. Think about this for a second : we have a total of 26 Max grounded (18 delivered already, and 8 still in Seattle) but we still can operate our routes network with minor disruptions! Is this a good thing? We also had too many routes that were not profitable. Some routes have actually never been profitable"

When they were expanding heavily the long haul routes, many observed they were growing way too fast. For a good couple of years they were just not reacting to the evidence of the huge debt the airline created quarter after quarter, and everything was justified on the expansion.

My humble guess (probably wrong) is that the real optimisation they claim they are doing isn't targeting the real problem: long haul operation and its associated costs. They probably put too many efforts there and if they truly downsize the 787 fleet it would be quite painful. Isn't Norwegian already nearly as big in long haul as it is in short haul? They will probably go the last round with expanding the 787 and its routes (from Arlanda now to Asia maybe?) but my fear is again this will only cause more dispersion of the network, less revenue, more costs to the operation, associated marketing, etc.

The whole project is as cool as rather... amateur.

They could just throw those 787 to Argentina

bennett123 wrote:

Given that the MAX will probably not fly again until at least August will surely impact on Q2 and Q3.

How long can they hold on.

If what's said above is true then it might actually helped by forcing them increase their aircraft utilization

the max grounding helped them more than anything else. Instead of having aircraft sit around. Now they can ask Boeing for compensation.

tphuang wrote:

the max grounding helped them more than anything else. Instead of having aircraft sit around. Now they can ask Boeing for compensation.

Boeing could have a quick answer: You're not flying so you're not losing money. You should pay us.

MIflyer12 wrote:

tphuang wrote:

the max grounding helped them more than anything else. Instead of having aircraft sit around. Now they can ask Boeing for compensation.

Boeing could have a quick answer: You're not flying so you're not losing money. You should pay us.

Help me out here, why in the world would Norwegian or any airline pay Boeing?

c933103 wrote:

bennett123 wrote:

Given that the MAX will probably not fly again until at least August will surely impact on Q2 and Q3.

How long can they hold on.

If what's said above is true then it might actually helped by forcing them increase their aircraft utilization

Disagree on their premium economy - it’s the best premium economy transatlantic product and is only marked up 50% or so.

a350lover wrote:

My guess is they are focusing on some improvements and cost cuts which are still sort of "friendly". The question is ... are they enough? Don't they come too late? Other than the closure of bases in Spain, 737 in USA and FCO they claim they are reviewing the whole network but no big changes have been done.

In an internal meeting held by different departments of the company, one responsible role confirmed:

"It is clear that, today, we have too many aircraft, and even more in order. Think about this for a second : we have a total of 26 Max grounded (18 delivered already, and 8 still in Seattle) but we still can operate our routes network with minor disruptions! Is this a good thing? We also had too many routes that were not profitable. Some routes have actually never been profitable"

When they were expanding heavily the long haul routes, many observed they were growing way too fast. For a good couple of years they were just not reacting to the evidence of the huge debt the airline created quarter after quarter, and everything was justified on the expansion.

My humble guess (probably wrong) is that the real optimisation they claim they are doing isn't targeting the real problem: long haul operation and its associated costs. They probably put too many efforts there and if they truly downsize the 787 fleet it would be quite painful. Isn't Norwegian already nearly as big in long haul as it is in short haul? They will probably go the last round with expanding the 787 and its routes (from Arlanda now to Asia maybe?) but my fear is again this will only cause more dispersion of the network, less revenue, more costs to the operation, associated marketing, etc.

The whole project is as cool as rather... amateur.

I bet many of their transatlantic flights have never made money and really have little hope of doing so. Anyone can fill planes with low fares, but they need to make money. I just can't see how a routing like LAXBCN or JFKMAD can make money except for a few months a year.

Norwegian needs to stop expanding and start focusing on what works, including some routes going seasonal only and entering into codeshares with other airlines for more feed.

Well,

When CASK is 0,46 NOK but RASK is only 0,28 NOK, you need to sell a hell of a lot of ancillary products and services to the passengers to earn money.

Why is the EBT number so negative compared to last year? I read through the document but I don't see anything that explains the large EBT loss.

Mortyman wrote:

Investors seems to look at the numbers more favourably: The stock increases by 5.8% on the Oslo Stock Exchange

Stock is down 3.4% on the Pink Sheets.

chonetsao wrote:

Norwegians problem is that it has no clear vision in expansion. It seemsed their transatlantic expansion was here and there as then everywhere. Point to point traffic is difficult to manage in a highly seasonable market. When other airlines are charging business class in the same fares Nowegian charges for premier economy you know things would go wrong. I often though without a proper business class product Norwegian would be at the competition disadvantage. Yes the freedom of cheap one way fare is very attractive and fills the hole of a market. The inability to lure premier passengers is a worry and will continue to be a weakness in transatlantic LCC carriers. Anyone wants to step in following Norwegian must realise this.

Not sure why you think other airlines charge business class fares at the level of Norwegian PE. That is definitely not true.
Have a look at BOS/JFK-LHR. The legacies charge an arm-and-leg. Typically, cheapest J fare is around $2,600 RT. Norwegian PE is around $1,400 RT.

Does anyone think it's possible that Norwegian will cease operations before/during this summer? I.e. should I be considering backup travel plans?

Dieuwer wrote:

Why is the EBT number so negative compared to last year? I read through the document but I don't see anything that explains the large EBT loss.

Mortyman wrote:

Investors seems to look at the numbers more favourably: The stock increases by 5.8% on the Oslo Stock Exchange

Stock is down 3.4% on the Pink Sheets.

chonetsao wrote:

Norwegians problem is that it has no clear vision in expansion. It seemsed their transatlantic expansion was here and there as then everywhere. Point to point traffic is difficult to manage in a highly seasonable market. When other airlines are charging business class in the same fares Nowegian charges for premier economy you know things would go wrong. I often though without a proper business class product Norwegian would be at the competition disadvantage. Yes the freedom of cheap one way fare is very attractive and fills the hole of a market. The inability to lure premier passengers is a worry and will continue to be a weakness in transatlantic LCC carriers. Anyone wants to step in following Norwegian must realise this.

Not sure why you think other airlines charge business class fares at the level of Norwegian PE. That is definitely not true.
Have a look at BOS/JFK-LHR. The legacies charge an arm-and-leg. Typically, cheapest J fare is around $2,600 RT. Norwegian PE is around $1,400 RT.

Other airlines have PE as well as business? I don’t think it makes sense to compare PE with business fares.

Yawn.

No airline in Europe operates profitably between January and March, even more so if Easter is in April.

Change the record.

planesarecool wrote:

Yawn.

No airline in Europe operates profitably between January and March, even more so if Easter is in April.

Change the record.

Lol. That's not even close to true. For example, http://www.iairgroup.com/phoenix.zhtml? ... ID=2347026.

Murdoughnut wrote:

c933103 wrote:

bennett123 wrote:

Given that the MAX will probably not fly again until at least August will surely impact on Q2 and Q3.

How long can they hold on.

If what's said above is true then it might actually helped by forcing them increase their aircraft utilization

Disagree on their premium economy - it’s the best premium economy transatlantic product and is only marked up 50% or so.

You might have misquoted

Does Norwegian own or lease their 737s and 787s ? What is stopping them from selling or leasing out some of these aircraft so as to stop some of the losses and hopefully repair their balance sheet ?

I thought demand for new-ish aircraft was reasonably healthy at the moment - don't hear of many airlines sending lots of these aircraft (besides 738 Max) to the desert right now

Mortyman wrote:

B747forever wrote:

No end in sight for the huge losses at Norwegian.

https://media.uk.norwegian.com/pressrel ... er-2863948

https://media.uk.norwegian.com/document ... 2019-87563


With all these poor results over the years, I don't understand how people are still willing to invest in Norwegian.

Well, Norwegian has taken certain steps lately to try and better their results and the result, while still bad, was better than various analysists had expected.

THS214 wrote:

Mortyman wrote:

Investors seems to look at the numbers more favourably: The stock increases by 5.8% on the Oslo Stock Exchange

Its good that you Mortyman have a positive thinking of Norwegian. Investors don't look those numbers as positive. Only that Norwegian loses (1,5bil NOK) instead of estimated (1,65bil NOK). That explains the stock price.

.

Yup, haven't said anything else. Simply observing.

THS214 wrote:

Mortyman wrote:

Investors seems to look at the numbers more favourably: The stock increases by 5.8% on the Oslo Stock Exchange

Its good that you Mortyman have a positive thinking of Norwegian. Investors don't look those numbers as positive. Only that Norwegian loses (1,5bil NOK) instead of estimated (1,65bil NOK). That explains the stock price.

https://www.reuters.com/article/norwegi ... SFWN22618P

I don't know (and dont't have time to look closely) about Easter for Norwegian but those numbers are terrible.

Norwegian stock is now +8%. It was less than 4% after Mortyman 5,8%?

Somebody knows something we don't.

If I would have extra money I would buy Norwegian now. Because +8% is not based for the 1Q result.

Losses mean nothing. Go ask Alitalia for a second opinion.

THS214 wrote:

Because +8% is not based for the 1Q result.

Actually it is, because the results were better than expected by the market

chonetsao wrote:

Norwegians problem is that it has no clear vision in expansion. It seemsed their transatlantic expansion was here and there as then everywhere. Point to point traffic is difficult to manage in a highly seasonable market. When other airlines are charging business class in the same fares Nowegian charges for premier economy you know things would go wrong. I often though without a proper business class product Norwegian would be at the competition disadvantage. Yes the freedom of cheap one way fare is very attractive and fills the hole of a market. The inability to lure premier passengers is a worry and will continue to be a weakness in transatlantic LCC carriers. Anyone wants to step in following Norwegian must realise this.

There are good overall points here and even more so regarding the wider LCC segment. What is DY's target audience? Its a LCC, so it needs to chase typical low paying Y pax. Its long haul routes should be places where they can nick a bit off Y from the back of the plane from the established players, who are only taking Y to supplement the F and J upfront. Instead DY has been venturing to premium markets to the likes of SIN, competing for what? And then having to leave with a bloody nose as it can't make any money. Niche routes such as LGW-JFK do ok, as they are twice daily taking a bit of Y from the swamp of volume from BA/AA/VS/DL. There is a reason why FR, EZ etc have been so tentative to get involved in the long-haul, despite having lower cost bases. They know the advantages that point to point LCCs have on costs get watered down the longer the flight, even before starting to look at the cost advantages the legacy carriers have with the feed from the Hub model. Its sad to see but DY just looks like a car crash that just keeps getting worse. Massive restructuring, selling off assets is inevitable at best.

We also have to remember that Norwegian has so many branches as well with secure finance and their leasing company that has the lease revenue from airlines from past deliveries .
In the meantime with every airlines who is currently struggling with the MAXs I see that Boeing will either compensate the lack of revenues or free 787s or way bigger discounted 787s .
Le bourget air show is just around the corner and of course we all know that it will be hard for Boeing this year .

B747forever wrote:

No end in sight for the huge losses at Norwegian.

Uh. I think there is an end in sight for their losses, actually. A permanent one. With these results, I really wonder what the financial incentive would have to be to put more good money after bad here.

Don't get me wrong; I like flying them, their planes are good, clean, service is decent, there's Internet... but they are not making money. At some point it has to stop.

They’re going to wish they’d accepted
the IAG offer

MIflyer12 wrote:

tphuang wrote:

the max grounding helped them more than anything else. Instead of having aircraft sit around. Now they can ask Boeing for compensation.

Boeing could have a quick answer: You're not flying so you're not losing money. You should pay us.

The courts will likely have a far different answer. Boeing is on the hook for billions in lost revenue, around the world.

Just had a quick read if the results.

In essence the loss equalled depreciation expense. As such from an operational perspective the airlines operations should have been cash flow neutral. With the airline still financing and on selling new aircraft, whilst at the same time selling older aircraft cash flows would be fairly hard to predict.

Considering Norwegian has a relatively young fleet, depreciation expense will be a greater factor in its accounts than established airlines with older fleets.

This result, while not being great isn't that bad. If Norwegian can increase its RASK by 5% over the short term, drop unprofitable routes and resize it's fleet to a more sustainable level, profits may not be too far away.

Now credit card companies are holding back ticket revenue from Norwegian.

"Dealing with card processors has made life difficult for the company, which remains in a tight spot."

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... redit-card

JetBuddy wrote:

Now credit card companies are holding back ticket revenue from Norwegian.

"Dealing with card processors has made life difficult for the company, which remains in a tight spot."

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... redit-card

This isn't new, it has been happening for around a year.