As you know, I almost never allow guest posts on the site, but that doesn’t stop people from sending over ideas. On very rare occasion, one comes through that grabs my attention. This one — from a contributor I’ll call “the Accountant” — is a very interesting catch. I don’t know what it means for Breeze, but it does at least create a possibility that the general narrative about the airline isn’t right.
I should note that I asked Breeze to comment on this and did not receive a response.
Breeze Aviation Group, Inc., dba Breeze Airways is David Neeleman’s latest airline, flying for almost three years now.
As a private company, Breeze doesn’t file SEC financials, but as a US commercial airline of more than $20mm in annual revenues, it must file quarterly Form 41 financials with the Department of Transportation (DOT), among them Schedule P-1.2 and Schedule P-6. These are available for download on the Bureau of Transportation Statistics website.
Schedule P-1.2 is an income statement. Schedule P-6 rearranges the same total operating expense of Schedule P-1.2 into different categories. All the filings provide are numbers, no commentary.
As some observers have noticed, Breeze’s DOT financials seem catastrophic, leading to some hair-raising headlines, albeit, so far, mostly in smaller media outlets. If you believe the DOT financials, Breeze seems in really bad shape:
Anyone with a bit of financial sophistication will note that what really matters is cash losses, not income statement losses, which is true, up to a point. But Form 41 Schedule B-1 (which is a balance sheet that must be filed by carriers including Breeze) shows paid-in capital (to Breeze) of $381mm and retained earnings of negative $408mm as of Sep 30, 2023. Those are very large accumulated losses.
Breeze doesn’t act like it. There’s been no obvious big change in revenue strategy. There have been no announced departures from the management team, and most people would say that’s a pretty sharp bunch. If Breeze was really on a precipice, wouldn’t some management be headed out the door? Breeze doesn’t seem to be turning back aircraft. To date, Breeze investors have apparently dutifully funded horrific losses.
Perhaps Neeleman has reality-distortion abilities a la Steve Jobs and keeps Breeze management and investors in a hypnotic daze. You are getting very sleepy…
Or maybe something else is going on.
“Others” of Unusual Size
Look at Schedule P-6 for Breeze. The following table consolidates a half-dozen salary & benefit categories into one line, but left all the other non-zero lines as they are from Breeze’s Schedule P-6:
What sticks out is the “Other” line, in bold above, sometimes the single biggest number in a quarter, bigger than total salaries and benefits or fuel. Those are big, big numbers.
Is that normal? Not for passenger airlines as reflected in Schedule P-6. If you look, airline by airline, quarter by quarter at the “Other” category for all significant US passenger carriers1 as a percent of total operating expense, “Other” averages less than 1% of total operating expense in both 2022 and for the three available quarters of 2023. For the other startup carrier, Avelo (which is just a month older then Breeze), “Other” is zero for all three quarters of 2023. (There is no Schedule P-6 data for Avelo for 2022.2)
Whereas for Breeze, “Other” as a percent of total expenses for 2022 and 2023 was… wait a minute, what the heck? For every quarter of 2022, “Other” is just a bit over 25% of operating expenses for all four quarters. And for 2023, “Other” is just a bit over 33% of operating expense for all three available quarters. Actually, it’s just a bit over 1/3 – 33.33%:
Those “Other” percentages are sketchy AF, both the consistency of them and the way they jump from one plateau (of around 25%) in 2022 to another (of around 33%) in 2023. Normal expense items don’t do that.
To quote Joe Pesci and Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinnie, “is that it?”, “no there’s mowah!”. Look at the variability of each of the expense categories in the Schedule P-6 based financials for Breeze, expressed as a percent of operating expenses. Specifically, line by line, for 2022 and 2023 in turn, take the standard deviation of the Schedule P-6 expense line percentages, and divide by the average of those percentages, across all four (for 2022) and three (for 2023) available quarters.
In the case of 2022 and 2023, the resulting measure of variability for “Other” (as a percent of operating expense) is at least an order of magnitude lower than for any other expense category. If you didn’t follow that, it’s simply creating a numerical measure of variability that turned out to be consistent with the notion that the “Other” line item, as a percent of total operating expenses, is unusually consistent across quarters. In other words, it’s not just your lying eyes.
To sum up, the mere existence of this massive expense category and its uniformity are unusual, as is the fact that it jumps from just above 25% every quarter of 2022 to just above 33% every quarter of 2023.
All of which is to say that the “Other” line item in Schedule P-6 for Breeze is hard to take at face value.
“Other” is Defined by Federal Regulation
Federal regulations define, far more tightly than you might think, what goes where in Schedule P-6. Airlines don’t get to squint at a particular number, throw it in “Other” on Schedule P-6, and call it good.
“14 CFR § 12 – Objective Classification—Operating Revenues and Expenses” of the US federal regs defines about 80 accounts and subaccounts that airlines must track, including by different functions across the company (those functions also defined by regulation). These accounts and subaccounts are then assigned to line items of Schedule P-6, the instructions for which appear to be most recently defined in Attachment A to OST3 Guidance Directive 248, dated to the year 2000.
“Other” is assigned a bunch of accounts that mostly amount to cats and dogs – things like foreign exchange gains/losses, corporate memberships and (in a blast from the 20th century past) some aircraft interchange4 expenses. There is also a catch-all category for expenses not captured by all the other expense accounts. But if your expense does fit elsewhere in that fairly extensive taxonomy, you’re not allowed to put it in “Other”.
That said there are freight airlines and at least one regional which have big “Other” lines in their Schedule P-6. So it does happen – it just doesn’t happen for any of the mainline passenger airlines, other than Breeze. So assuming Breeze is living up to its DOT obligations, whatever that big item is in “Other,” it’s something you don’t see too often in the passenger airline business.
These Hard-to-Believe “Other” Numbers Drive Breeze Results
If you find a number hard to believe, it’s natural to wonder what happens without that number.5
Take the Breeze financials, and quarter by quarter in 2022, deduct an amount from the “Other” line equal to 25% of total operating expense. Do the same thing for 2023, but this time deduct an amount from the “Other” line equal to 1/3 of the total operating expense. In each case, as shown in the nearby table, it leaves a small positive residual, the size of which, relative to total operating expenses, is much more typical of a mainline scheduled passenger airline reporting Schedule P-6. Just saying.
If we look at Breeze financials where we substitute residual “Other” for the actual “Other” filed in Schedule P-6, results obviously change a lot:
Huh, look at that, a positive operating margin in 2Q23. And break-even in 3Q23. That’s interesting.
We are not claiming this is the right way to look at Breeze. The point is that the view of Breeze as suffering catastrophic losses depends heavily on this mysterious, hard-to-believe “Other” line. Once you regard that line as subject to doubt, how well Breeze is doing is up in the air. If you believe the “Other” line doesn’t belong in the financials at all — which we are not saying — then under that assumption the resulting financials suggest Breeze is well on its way to making money, indeed, has even had a solidly profitable quarter.
Again, that might not be right. But it is true that how you view Breeze depends very much on how much you believe that “Other” number.
What’s Going On?
Good question. Outside of Breeze and its bankers/lawyers/investors/etc, probably no one knows.
The fact that even a small amount of analysis makes “Other” stand out as unusual suggests it’s not motivated by a desire to mislead. Any competent analyst looking at Schedule P-6 would see this issue almost instantly. Though it must be said that while there have been people who’ve noticed Breeze’s apparently disastrous financials, no one seems to have published anything noting this Schedule P-6 weirdness.
1 American, Delta, Southwest, United, Alaska, JetBlue, Hawaiian, Spirit, Frontier, Allegiant, Sun Country
2 Avelo didn’t file Schedule P-1.2 or Schedule P-6 in 2022, though DOT 2021 Schedule P-1.1 financials for Avelo show revenues above $20mm, so presumably, by DOT rules, Avelo should have filed Schedule P-1.2 in 2022.
3 The DOT’s Office of the Secretary of Transportation
4 Aircraft interchanges were multistop flights by one aircraft, where some legs were flown by crews from one airline and others by another airline. Yes, aircraft swapping – pilot goes home with another airline’s airplane. In the time of regulation, it was a way of cobbling together same-plane service for passenger convenience that otherwise wouldn’t exist. Oddly, the last aircraft interchange continued well after deregulation (into the 1990s) between Dallas and Alaska via Seattle on American and Alaska.
5 Another thing: if you have reason to doubt one number in a set of financials, particularly a number that drives those financials, it’s also not crazy to wonder how much to believe the other numbers.
48 comments on “One Part of Breeze’s Financials is Hard to Believe”
I think you might want to ask Breeze if they have anything more to say 48 hours after this post went live
Hope you don’t mind I posted a link to this article on airliners.net in the Breeze thread
Waiting on the overly rosy avgeeks over there to eviscerate you for suggesting that anything could be amiss with Breeze. Followed by your post disappearing because it was “slightly upsetting”
Can’t agree with you more, that forum is a joke even more so the moderators.
The airliners geeks love themselves some Breeze, but they don’t live in reality. They live in the land of hopes, wishes and dreams..
Haven’t been on that site in years, but I’d bet there are still people there believing the updated Fokker 100 project is still a reality and is launching any day now.
David – Link away… if anyone has answers, I’d love to hear it.
As a non-public company, what would they care? Would be surprised if they say anything… but maybe the next filing will have different numbers in other, or perhaps in 2024. The investors/bankers/lawyers might raise the issue but won’t do so in a public forum.
Excellent post!
Fascinating take and walkthrough from a financial side; I’d love to see more occasional guest posts like this.
As is usually the case, the juicy bits are hidden in the footnotes (if any) and buried in bigger buckets.
I know that Breeze flies some unique routes, but I’d be curious to see how how other public information (e.g., fares & load factors or pax moved) for Breeze compares against other airlines.
Not a finance bro in the least, so forgive me if this is a dumb question, but could the “Other” be repayments back to investors? I could imagine a scenario where Breeze has to make aggressive repayments to investors to keep them from jumping ship or pulling the plug on the whole thing and selling the aircraft (Delta has entered the chat).
Maybe what I describe isn’t even legal – I don’t now, I’m pretty much Kevin from The Office when it comes to numbers with dollar signs in front of them.
Kenneth – Well, see, here’s the problem… I’m also not a finance bro so I can’t answer that. But really, the “other” line is kind of a black box, so it’s hard to know what that is without Breeze telling us explicitly.
I thought initially, that is charter revenue, supposedly they do well with those, but upon checking the helpful link to the CFR, thank you the Accountant, that is supposed to be logged in operating revenues and expenses. Maybe this other line is a mistake, the mother of all fat finger mistakes, but one would think they figure that out pretty quickly.
I am most curious about Breeze and Porter’s finances but it figures that we know very little about either one.
Repayments to equity investors would not appear on the income statement – dividends and stock repurchases would show up as balance sheet adjustments (through the equity accounts) and in the cash flow statement.
Whatever this is, it’s something that can be characterized as an operating expense, because that’s where it appears.
Got it – thank you!
Repayments to investors would either be treated as a reduction in outstanding debt or a reduction in the value of outstanding stock, depending on how the investment was recorded, but not as an expense.
Ah, I see JT8D beat me to it I hadn’t read down far enough. And JT8D made a good point I missed, you’d see it on the cash flow statement.
Sorry for the duplication!
Great piece and very interesting. Totally anecdotal here, but I live in a Breeze base city and have flown them a few times (their Nicest bundle is one of the best deals in the sky). Given how often I hear how badly they’re doing, I’m always impressed with the load factors and network additions.
Obviously I’m very aware that you can be flying full airplanes to every corner of the country and still lose a lot of money. Still… doesn’t totally add up how they’d be getting such big loads and have >50% losses.
Especially because the management team knows how airline numbers work. It’s not like the Independence Air crew is running Breeze.
It doesn’t matter what the Other category represents, its a cost either way. Whether its $50M in miscategorized office supplies, $50M in miscategorized real estate costs, or $50M in donations to the Mormon church, it is still a massive expense that is making Breeze less viable by the day.
Breeze’s biggest cost challenge has to be its disparate network. For such a small airline, it is spread wayyyyyy too thin and its strategy changes on a monthly basis. A small player should be more focused on establishing 1 or 2 major bases which can see the benefit of scale and cost savings of having its flying and main tenance from the same base. Not just chasing RASM all over the country wherever there may be an opportunity. Running a P2P network as spread out and linear as MX’s is not sustainable at its current size. The fixed costs alone of stations seeing 2-4 flights a week will drown them. Also, for an airline which set its sights on serving underserved or unserved markets, there is certainly a lot of service to MCO and LAS.
Anthony – But that’s just it. We don’t know if it is a real cost or not.
If it a $50m donation to the Mormon church, then that is not relevant to the operation. It may make Breeze go bankrupt but it would suggest there’s viability to the core model… IF it’s not a real cost. Chances are it is a real cost that’s just miscategorized, but we just don’t know.
Per 14 CFR § 12 (the regulations governing the classifications):
“Other = Sum of objective Accounts 58 + 61 + 63 + 64 + 65 + 66 + 67 + 71 + 77.8 + 77.9 for all functions + 69 for all functions except 5100 (plus aircraft property taxes in Account 5169)”
58 Injuries, Loss and Damage.
Record here the remainder of gains, losses or costs resulting from accidents, casualties or mishandlings, after offsetting insurance recoveries, as accumulated until finally determined in balance sheet account 1890 Other Assets and Deferred Charges. This account shall not include gains or losses from retirement of property and equipment resulting from casualties. Such gains or losses shall be recorded in appropriate capital gains or losses accounts.
61 Foreign Exchange Gains and Losses.
Record here gains or losses from transactions involving currency translations resulting from normal, routine, current fluctuations in rates of foreign exchange. Gains or losses of a nonroutine abnormal character and gains or losses which arise from long-term debt principal and interest transactions shall not be entered in this account but in profit and loss account 85, Foreign Exchange Gains and Losses.
63 Interrupted Trips Expense.
Record here expenses allowed or paid for the care and serving of passengers because of unscheduled interruptions in passenger journeys. Transportation refunds and the cost of forwarding traffic by surface common carrier or otherwise as a result of such interruptions shall not be charged to this account but to the appropriate operating revenue account.
64 Memberships.
Record here the cost of membership dues in trade associations, chambers of commerce, or other business associations and organizations together with special assessments related thereto.
65 Corporate and Fiscal Expenses.
Record here corporate and fiscal fees and expenses of the air carrier and all expenses in connection with exchange and transfer of capital stock excluding expenses in connection with original issuance of capital stock.
1/2
2/2
66 Uncollectible Accounts.
Record here losses from uncollectible accounts and allowance provisions and adjustments thereto, for such losses. When allowances for uncollectible accounts are established, losses as realized shall be charged against such allowances and shall not be charged to this account.
67 Clearance, Customs and Duties.
Record here clearance, customs, duties and brokerage fees and charges applicable to clearing aircraft and traffic.
71 Other Expenses.
Record here all expenses ordinarily associated with air transportation and its incidental services not provided for otherwise.
77.8 Uncleared Interchange Expense Credits.
Record here credits to operating expenses, from operations performed for others under aircraft interchange agreements, which have not been cleared to the objective accounts to which applicable.
77.9 Other Uncleared Expense Credits.
Record here credits to operating expenses, from other than operations under aircraft interchange agreements, which have not been cleared to the objective accounts to which applicable.
69 Taxes—Other Than Payroll.
(a) Record here all taxes levied against the air carrier not otherwise provided for including nonrefundable aircraft fuel and oil taxes. Interest and penalties on delinquent taxes shall not be charged to this account but to profit and loss accounts 82 Other Interest and 89.9 Other Miscellaneous Nonoperating Debits, respectively.
(b) Entries to this account shall clearly reveal each kind of tax and the governmental agency to which paid or payable.
Employing deductive reasoning, we can probably rule out:
Accounts 58, 61, 63, 64, 66, 67, 77.8, 77.9, and 69
Leaving just accounts 65 (Corporate and Fiscal Expenses) and 71 (Other Expenses).
Account 71 is a strange one, because it is an “Other” category, buried within the “Other” category on the P-6.
So, now that we’ve narrowed it down to two accounts, I’ll speculate.
Could this be some kind of percentage-based expense baked into the airline’s leases that is somehow a fancy financial security in Breeze corporate (linking it to account 65)? Something akin to a real estate landlord who collects rents from retail tenants (like restaurants) based on the tenants’ gross receipts? This would explain the relatively fixed percentage each quarter. The jump in 2023 could be attributable to the dramatic increase in capitalization rates due to the Fed’s dramatic increases in base interest rates. And if those percentage-based leases are actually some kind of non-cash transaction (paying the lessors in equity instead of cash), then from a cash-flow perspective, Breeze would look to be OK.
I know that this is a far-fetched and very non-traditional arrangement, would love to hear others’ speculation.
I was going to comment along the same line. I see nothing that could amount to aircraft costs in the previous categories (neither depreciation nor rentals), so unless they got their aircraft for free … that cost probably is in this category.
And from an airline prespective, I’m sure they would all love to make it a truly variable cost (as a fixed % of revenue is) …
That was my first guess too. 1-2% or so of costs going to aircraft depreciation and rentals is way too low
Think you’re on the right track. In setting up an airline many years ago, we (founders) contemplated segregating the “operating company” that flies planes from the “marketing company” that sells tickets, hotels, credit cards, etc. – there’s no reason to share juicy non-flying details with competitors or the public (including ancillary commissions, IT costs, aircraft sale/leaseback proceeds, credit card payment flows, executive compensation, etc.) when, by the letter of DOT regulations, you don’t have to. Like how mainline airlines handle reporting with their regional partners. To execute, you set up sister entities within a Group, or a completely separate entity with 1:1 parallel ownership, and you assess a management fee (e.g. 25% or 33%) on flying expenses to flow money over to the marketing company which is actually running the passenger business. Breeze is very careful to tag everything “Breeze Aviation Group” so we can’t see the detail, but seems a real possibility to me.
Not very familiar with the practice or the GAAP rules & federal regulations involved, but I believe that at least at one point (and probably still), some companies (especially conglomerates) were paying “management fees” to the parent company for the privilege of managing them.
To your point, that could well be what’s going on here, in order to help bury some of the juicy details, and in order to make Breeze look less profitable (and therefore less worthy of fighting) at first glance to competitors.
Interesting to speculate.
Private equity firms suck money out of the companies they own that way – a management fee. To pay for all the brilliance and unique insight that their owners bring to the situation. Because, as you know, no private equity owner has ever screwed up. But also, those Powerpoint presentations don’t pay for themselves.
The above might include sarcasm.
Breeze could also be running a startup within a startup. This is not unheard of. In fact many companies have look unprofitable based on revenue from their initial product while pouring resources into developing their second. When the second product comes out of stealth mode suddenly their financials look great AND they have a second amazing product.
If Breeze considers themselves a technology company they could build a new services/operations platform which would fall under Account 71 “…expenses ordinarily associated with air transportation and its incidental services not provided for otherwise.”
This may be a technology improvement they can sell to other airlines to differentiate their revenue streams as they grow. Even if other US carriers don’t want to support them with their business, there are a lot of airlines globally who would jump at the chance to improve operations and/or the customer experience.
> …. AND they have a second amazing product
teleportation? ;)
This is really interesting. But I’m even more curious about interchanges especially that AA/AS one…
I’m curious if there are any good resources on it?
Nick – Here’s an oldie but goodie.
https://community.southwest.com/t5/Blog/Flashback-Fridays-A-Look-at-the-Interchange-Era/ba-p/38865
More Interchange Era flights, 1975 to 1983.
I was working for Continental Airlines in Denver at old Stapleton Airport, those years, until Frank Lorenzo took Continental into bankruptcy, and fired every single employee, including me.
We had a CO DC-10-10 (flight # 989) that originated in IAH, flew to DEN, flew to SEA, with CO crew, then went on to ANC with Western Airlines crew, turned around and repeated the route back to IAH.
The flight was packed with freight for the Trans Alaska oil pipeline, under construction then.
Construction on the $8 billion pipeline began on March 27, 1975. (Source: the internet.)
Some history for you youngsters… about the pipeline, still working today.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Trans-Alaska-Pipeline
Max gross take off weight was 430,000 lbs, ish, for the DC-10-10.
More on the DC-10-10 from Wikipedia…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-10
Continental’s DC-10’s had a ‘pub’ stand up bar, between first class and coach, back then.
Coach seats had a 34 inch seat pitch, in the entire coach section.
30 second Continental TV ad, about the ‘pub’.
https://www.google.com/search?q=continental+airlines+dc-10+pub&oq=continental+airlines+dc-10+pub&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i22i30.15906j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:a31f114e,vid:30ZaCODwl2E,st:0
Breeze’s Rental and Depreciation categories (combined ~2-3%) are very low compared to other carriers like Allegiant, Spirit, Frontier, Avelo, and Southwest. Most others hover around 10% for the combined total, with Frontier at 20%.
Rental and/or Depreciation are typically where you’d put aircraft ownership costs – which leads me to suspect that Breeze’s “Other” category might contain the cost of owning/leasing their aircraft. Perhaps they have a payment or “rent-to-own” plan that caps their aircraft costs at some percentage of all other operating costs?
Breeze’s “Other” percentage of 25-33% would be very high for an airline’s aircraft ownership costs, but if you’re a startup flying brand new aircraft I’d expect that number to be higher than for established airlines.
Frequent reader / listener, but very infrequent commenter here. Just wanted to give props to the author, as well as to you, Brett, for going ahead and running with this. I’m a Breeze fan — or at least a fan of the 220, and Breeze knows how to hook you up in that regard :) Great details, and super interesting to think about. All around, incredibly nerdy, and though a bit tangential / speculative compared to your normal content, this was a fun read, and the comments are all thoughtful and excellent. (Sorry if I just jinxed that last bit by bringing it up overtly.)
Great article. I’m on the side of it doesn’t really matter, it’s still an expense, but interesting to think about nonetheless. I don’t see how Breeze could possibly be making much let alone turning a profit. They keep adding routes and planes at an astonishing pace, all well placing dead last(Even behind Jetblue!) in 2023 on time performance and 9th/12 in cancellations.
This is just bad journalism. What’s missing from the standard P&L buckets is AC ownership (lease payments). The Other bucket is clearly Breeze making lease payments on their AC – hence it goes up each quarter as they add AC.
Conspiracy journalism… yikes.
Why don’t other airlines list lease payments under “Other” then? Or do you think Breeze is the only airline that leases aircraft?
I know this is tough for you, but think critically. Where on Breeze’s P&L are the lease payments? Which bucket do they fall under?
Hint: you can’t find them. There isn’t an account with large enough numbers to make sense. Weird that there is an account labeled other that magically is in the ballpark for what we’d expect lease payments to be. Very strange.
But nah, let’s go with conspiracy. That’s more likely.
I don’t know where they are, I haven’t looked and I’m not a finance person. And I’m not assuming that there’s any sort of conspiracy, more likely an accounting mistake until proven otherwise.
You didn’t answer my straightforward question though: if it’s standard practice, then why don’t other airlines show their lease payments in the “Other” category as well?
Not possible under DOT regulations, if you bothered to read the article.
Also, please show us an airline where aircraft ownership is 33% of operating expenses. And also, where it’s a fixed 33%.
And is David Neeleman a kind and considerate cult leader? I bet you like B6 too.
I like JetBlue and liked idea of Breeze before actually flown with them. LoL
Breeze operation makes JetBlue looks like Delta. At least they texted me the day before that the flight will be 6 h late so I didn’t have to sit at the airport for 6h.
The economy seat is nothing but Nice on the Embraer. It is just not comfortable to sit in for even just 2 h. At least their seat does not look like they are about to break into pieces like those found on Frontier.
How about the Nicest? I had the opportunity to enjoy that once in a transcon A220. It was good except for the space under the seat in front of you. Somehow they have an extra supporting piece in the middle of that space. It limits the size of the bag you can place there and also makes stretching legs into that space less comfortable.
What is needed in order to try and make sense of the outsize “Other” category is the Statement of Cash Flows.
Most likely there are either a lot of non-cash expenses or one very large non-cash expense that accounts for the outsize “Other” category.
Because depreciation expense is disclosed on the income statement, it isn’t that, so most likely it’s some sort of deferred expense.
With any start up (airline, tech, etc), the big windfall is when the company goes public. This is big payback for management and financiers of said company.
However, in preparation of an IPO, the company is required to arrange its accounts in GAAP format which includes a tremendous amount of disclosure (ie: footnotes and supplemental schedules). No CFO nor accounting firm wants to sign off on these schedules unless a proper assessment had been made. Don’t want to end with C-Suite types in jail and an accounting firm dissolved like what happen with WorldCom or Enron.
As alluded to above, the large “OTHER EXPENSES” could be some type of “consulting fee” going back to the financiers who are hedging their bet and want some of their money upfront instead of solely relying on the IPO.
Combining ideas put forth here: Could there be a fee paid to the “Management Company” set as a percentage of some benchmark and the “Management Company” is who is actually leasing the aircraft? Thus, no explicit aircraft costs (leasing or otherwise) would appear in the operating company’s P&L. If and when Breeze wants to go public, such arrangements will likely see the light of day and these entities may all be placed under a new holding company.
ramcm7 – Certainly could be, but it’s entirely opaque so we have no idea.
If that is the setup, then this is probably only partially for aircraft leases with some other stuff thrown in. Just can’t know what that split really is.
Losses — whether realized or unrealized — on fuel hedging strategy, or purchase of fuel/oil forward contracts?