Republic Airways Holdings, Inc. Q3 2008 Earnings Call Transcript

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2008-11-03 19:11:14.0

Tags: Call Transcript, Agreement, Earnings, Loan, Republic Airways Holdings Inc., Seeking Alpha, Call Transcript, Agreement, Earnings, Loan, Republic Airways Holdings Inc., Seeking Alpha

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Lily Ng - Merrill Lynch.

Lily Ng – Merrill Lynch

My first question is regarding all these loans that you’ve extended to your various partners. Just curious what kind of return you’re getting on these loans, and are there collateral backings on these loans? Just any details on that would be helpful.

Robert H. Cooper

Sure, Lily. Let me just take them by the numbers. The Midwest loan for $25 million is secure, it’s a collateralized loan and it’s currently senior to the other lender in the agreement which is Texas Pacific Group, so we feel very comfortable about that. The debtor possession loan for Frontier Airlines is $12.5 million; it’s also secure and will pay out ahead of any administrative clients, so again a highly secured loan there. It relates to Mokulele Airlines; also a secured loan, essentially backed by all of the assets of that business, and as it relates to US Airways, that is an unsecured loan, although cross-collateralized with the slot loan agreement we have with the US Airways as well as the two JSAs with Republic and Chautauqua.

As far as margins, well, the different loans have different levels of risk, but we think each loan has a risk adjusted rate of return associated with it, so we feel that the loans are market rate, if you will, and generally have higher yields.

Lily Ng – Merrill Lynch

Right. Actually, it’s great. Second question on the business across the loans. I’m curious if you could give us some guidance, if you would, on what kind of margins are you guys looking at, going forward?

Robert H. Cooper

Well you know we don’t talk about margins, Lily. And margins can vary based on what the cost of fuel is and our agreements, so stripping out where the fuel business is, there’s no doubt that the agreements that we used to put in place with the repositioning the Frontier aircraft are lower margins than we used with the Frontier agreement. But they are better margins than having an airplane sit on the ground.

Operator

Your next question comes from James Parker - Raymond James

James Parker – Raymond James

Curious, do you have any carrying costs in the 4th quarter from any of the 17 170’s you took back from Frontier?

Bryan Bedford

Yeah, Jim, we do. Whereas this quarter was 40 months of aircraft time, the 4th quarter is 18 months worth, so about a half.

 

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