원문 보기
Warren Buffett just sold off large portions of his positions in both Delta Airlines and Southwest Airlines, which honestly came as a huge surprise to the media! In total, Berkshire Hathaway ended up selling nearly 13 million shares of Delta Airlines, equating to over $300 million in value, and then 2.3 million shares of Southwest airlines, which ended up being over $70 million in value.
Now this news came after Buffett stated in an earlier interview that he was not going to be selling any positions due to the current market conditions - but clearly, he has changed his mind and the market is reacting negatively. Taking a look at the after hours stock price performance of these companies that he just sold off, Delta Airlines is down over 11% after hours, and then Southwest Airlines down over 5%.
But not even just these 2 companies are down, Buffett's move basically impacted all other airliners in the industry because it appears that Buffett is losing confidence in the industry as a whole. Now in this video, I'm not going to be speculating on all of the reasons why I think that Buffett sold these two positions, but I do think that a huge motivator behind his decision was because of the recent bailout package that was announced by the U.S.
government. With the CEO of Delta explicitly saying that they're burning through over $60 million in cash every single day, a bailout will essentially be necessary for a lot of these larger airliners. So Delta along with many of the other airliners in the industry have already put in their applications to the government to receive some of this relief money, but as investors, we need to know what exactly does this bailout entail?
Well the government stated that its going to offering $50 billion in tax payer relief money to these airlines, where half of it is going to be considered grants, or cash from the government, and then the other half will be loans to be repaid at a later date. But what investors need to know about this bailout is that the government is expecting to receive, and as I quote "appropriate compensation" in exchange for this bailout money, which could be in the form of stock in these companies, and that would end up diluting a lot of the other shareholders.
And some of the other conditions of this bailout are really not that appetizing for the companies, like they're not allowed to lay off any staff until September 30th of 2020, and then after that point, they can only lay off up to 10%. Furthermore, the companies will not be able to do any stock buybacks or pay any dividends until September 2021, so that's basically over a year away and that would definitely impact shareholder returns.
Now with the bailout package, I would say that it's highly unlikely that a lot of these larger airliners will go bankrupt, and that's probably not the reason why Warren Buffett sold in the first place. But as a value investor, Warren Buffett probably sees the returns of Delta and Southwest Airlines not being adequate compared to other companies that he could otherwise be investing in.
So what I'm saying is that there's an opportunity cost associated with holding these airline companies in the short term, being over the next 3-5 years likely, if they cannot recover as quickly as some other great and undervalued businesses. So then the question becomes, should you buy into airline stocks after Warren Buffett sold off much of his positions in Delta and Southwest?
Well in my personal opinion, it really depends on the airline that you want to be buying into, and that's what we're going to be investigating in this video. I'll be digging into the balance sheets of many of the largest airliners in North America and then ranking these companies in terms of their balance sheets.
And hopefully, that should help you determine which companies are the safest bets right now for the best risk reward profile. So if you do enjoy this video, make sure to hit that like button down below to support my channel, it really helps me out. And then if you haven't already, definitely consider subscribing down below for more weekly investing videos just like this!
And with that said, let's jump right into these airline stocks. Alright so in a time like this, where businesses are shutting down and airlines really aren't doing any flights, except for the essential ones as determined by the government, what investors need to be doing is looking at the balance sheets of these companies.
We shouldn't really be paying much attention at all to the income statement because earnings have changed dramatically over the past few months. And guys, even if all of these companies are set to survive because of a bailout, it's very important to still look at the balance sheets to see which companies are able to self-sustain the most.
Because, as we all know, these bailout packages really have a lot of strings attached and don't benefit investors to the full extent - other than the companies surviving through this economic period. So what I'll be doing is investigating and ranking the balance sheets of some of the top 5 airliners over here in North America, and those would include Southwest Airlines, American Airlines, Delta Airlines, United Airlines, and then Air Canada.
So first of all, I want to start off with Delta Airlines, which is the largest airline position that Warren Buffett cut out of his Berkshire Hathaway stake. Now taking a look at this company's balance sheet, the first thing that we want to look at is current assets section, and that includes their cash amount of $2.9 billion.
So with that being said, their total current assets ends up being $8.2 billion, and now it's time to take a look at their current liabilities. Now what's really scary here for any investor out there is that this company has current liabilities of nearly $20 billion. And although 40% of that number is their deferred revenues, which is essentially the pre-booked flights that they actually haven't done yet, it's still a scary number and it shows a lot of debt on this company's balance sheet.
So in order to rank Delta amongst many of its peers, I'm going to calculate the current ratio, which is just your current assets divided by your current liabilities, and that ends up being 0.41 for Delta. But I'm also going to be comparing these companies based on the total cash to current liabilities ratio, which essentially shows how much cash they have available to pay off all of those liabilities, and for Delta, that's sitting at 0.14.
Now moving on to American Airlines, which is the biggest airliner in the U.S. They have cash of $280 million and then current assets of $8.2 billion. So right here, we can see that this company really has a very low amount of cash. Now we also find that this company does have a lot of marketable securities in their cash section, but I personally don't want to take that into account right now in terms of their cash because this number was reported in December 2019, and since the stock market has dropped significantly since then, this amount would likely be a lot lower than what is reported right there.
Now on the flip side, this company does have $18.3 billion in current liabilities, which is obviously a lot higher than their current assets, and then of which, they have $8 billion in deferred revenues, which are those pre-booked flights that may or may not go through. So tallying up their current ratio, which is again their current assets to current liabilities, it comes out to be 0.45 for American Airlines.
And then their total cash to current liabilities ratio ends up being 0.21. Now at this point, we're seeing that American Airlines is looking slightly better than Delta because their current ratio is a little bit higher, as well as their total cash to current liabilities, but it should be noted that their cash amount does include those marketable securities, so I'm not sure if I would totally trust it all.
Alright now moving onto United Airlines, which is obviously another huge airliner out there in the U.S., and this company has current assets of $8.2 billion and then cash of $2.8 billion. And what we see from this is that their current cash levels relative to their current assets is a lot higher than American Airlines, and it's about the same as Delta so this company is looking a little bit better than American right now.
Now taking a look at the liabilities section on United Airlines balance sheet, we find that they have current liabilities of $14.9 billion, and then of which, their deferred revenues are $7.3 billion. So because United has a lot less in terms of their current liabilities when compared to Delta and American Airlines, this actually gives them a higher current ratio, which is their current assets to current liabilities, and that is 0.55.
And on top of that, we do find that their total cash to current liabilities ratio is the highest of the bunch being at 0.33. So now moving on to Southwest Airlines, which is one of the companies that Warren Buffett chose to trim his position in, and they have current assets of $6 billion, which is the lowest of the bunch.
However, we do find that they have a similar amount of cash to Delta and United Airlines, being at about $2.5 billion right now, and that is a very good ratio when compared to their current assets. On top of that, we find this company has the lowest amount of current liabilities, being at $9 billion only.
And then we also find that about 50% of those current liabilities are sitting in terms of deferred revenues, and so the higher amount of deferred revenues relative to your current liabilities is generally better. So this ends up giving Southwest Airlines a current ratio of 0.67 and then a total cash to current liabilities ratio of 0.45, which is actually the best of the bunch so far.
Alright, now the final airline that we're going to be talking about today is one in my home country Canada, that being Air Canada. And I wanted to talk about this one to compare Canada versus the U.S. in terms of how the airliners might be doing. So getting straight into their balance sheet, we find that Air Canada has current assets of $7.5 billion and then their cash amount is sitting at $2.1 billion.
And then looking at the liabilities section of their balance sheet, we find that their current liabilities are sitting at $7.8 billion, and then of which, their deferred revenues are over 50% of those current liabilities sitting at $4.1 billion. Now when we calculate their current ratio, this ends up being 0.97 and this essentially means that the company nearly has the same amount of current assets to their current liabilities.
Finally, calculating their total cash to current liabilities ratio, this ends up being 0.76, which is the best in the industry compared to all of the companies that I've talked about. Alright guys, so to sum everything up, I ranked all of these companies in terms of their current ratio and then their total cash to current liabilities ratio, because these are the two ratios that are very important when you're looking at a company's balance sheet and if they're going to survive through a recession.
And you've probably noticed by now, but I've intentionally ranked these companies from worst to best with Delta Airlines being the worst in terms of those ratios and then Air Canada being the best of the bunch. But in terms of the best U.S. Airliner, it would have to be Southwest Airlines because of their low amount of debt on their balance sheet.
Now this probably explains why Warren Buffett wanted to sell so much of Delta being over $300 million of his stake in the company compared to only a little bit of Southwest, being only $70 million. And I honestly don't blame him because when you see these current ratios below 1, it's showing that these companies are not able to survive a single year based on the current assets in their balance sheet.
And that's why so many of these companies are applying for the bailout money because simply they don't have enough current assets to cover those current liabilities. So that leaves us with the question, should you buy into airline stocks after Warren Buffett liquidated his positions? In my personal opinion, I would only buy into Air Canada stock because this is first of all the company that I'm most familiar with having lived in Canada my entire life.
But with their current ratio being the highest of the bunch at nearly 1 and then their total cash to current liabilities also being the highest, I think that they have the best chances of survival and profiting after this circumstance. And from my knowledge, even though nothing has been announced about a bailout for the airliners in Canada, I really don't think that Air Canada would be going away anytime soon because they are such a critical component to our economy.
Now in terms of the U.S. companies, I probably wouldn't buy into any of those. Although, Southwest is the best of the bunch and if I were to, it would probably have to be Southwest. After seeing that Warren Buffett sold off part of his positions in both Southwest and Delta, it really does worry me and I would have to do a lot more research into the companies if I did plan on buying them.
Not only that, but if you are an investor looking into buying into these airline companies, I think it's very important to fully understand the bailout terms and conditions. There will likely be separate agreements for each one of these companies, so that will be coming in the near future here, so we really don't know at this point how much benefit the U.S.
government could be getting out of bailing these companies out. So hopefully, that gives you guys some insight into my thoughts on these companies and which one is going to be the best one to buy. But as I always say, make sure to do your own research because I'm not a financial advisor and I don't want you blindly picking my stocks just because I talked about them.
So anyways, with that said, thank you so much for watching the video, I really do appreciate it. Let me know down below what you guys think about airline stocks and if you're going to be buying them after this bailout package just came out. And if you did enjoy this video, make sure to tap that like button down below to support my channel, and then if you haven't already, consider subscribing for more weekly videos on personal finance, business, and investing in the near future. And I will see you in the next one!
Comments 0