Southwest Airlines Fuel Hedging and Relations to Profitability
Abstract
In order to stay airborne, a passenger airline has to consistently generate profits. Profits come only from paying passengers, hence all stratagems must be customer oriented. In a scenario where there are many airlines competing with each other, one way of attracting passengers is to keep the cost of flying low, while providing value for money. On the other hand, expenses must tightly controlled to reach and stay at the lowest possible. Certain expenses are unavoidable; however, one variable that can be kept low through decisive planning and foresight is the cost of fuel, which, at best, can be called volatile. A good way to achieve this is by hedging fuel cost,
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Fuel has consistently been one of the largest expense categories for domestic airlines, ranking second only to personnel expenses. During 2003, fuel costs represented, on average, over 16% of the total operating expenses for all U.S. domestic airlines studied by Richard Cobbs and Alex Wolf (2004). Moreover, airlines are generally unable to increase fares to offset any significant increase in fuel costs. From 2001 to 2003, these same airlines experienced a 25.9% compound annual increase in jet fuel costs while average airline pricing decreased by 0.1%, as measured by revenue per available seat mile (Cobbs and Wolf, 2004). Jet fuel costs have substantially risen over the past several years putting consistent pressure on airlines to maintain positive cash flows. Any saving in fuel costs works out to profit earned.
In fuel-intensive arenas such as the Airlines Industry, high and volatile fuel prices can have a significant impact on the bottom line, not to mention adding to the difficult task of budgeting for future fuel expenditures. If fuel costs are not actively managed, they can lead a company into losses. Airlines can mitigate their exposure to volatile and potentially rising fuel costs, as well as natural gas and electricity costs, through hedging. Hedging allows the fuel market participants (companies that consume large
By using strategies like Fuel hedging in order to turn a variable cost into a fixed cost means that qantas can lock in a certain price for fuel (via contract) and save money if the price of fuel increases. Qantas’ future in efficiency looks to be very promising as an increase in use of E commerce, more efficient planes, and improved economies of scale all work in favour to ensure qantas’ ability to
Business Strategy – BAD 4013 – SUMMER 1999 Case Study Southwest Airlines I. Strategic Profile and Case Analysis Purpose The mission of Southwest Airlines is dedication to the highest quality of customer service delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride, and company spirit. Twenty-seven years ago, Rolling King, owner of floundering commuter airline, and Herb Kelleher, King’s lawyer, got together and decided to start a different kind of airline that would provide a short-haul, low-fair, high-frequency, point-to-point service in the United States. The company began service on June 18, 1971 with flights between Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio (“The Golden Triangle” as Herb called it). Southwest Airlines is the fourth
Economic, social-cultural, and technological forces are the external macro-environmental factors Southwest Airlines should be most concerned with. Weak economic growth reduces the purchasing power of an airline’s target market. Southwest, known for being a leader in low cost airline, provides flights at a higher frequency and capacity to attain profit. However, the company experienced increasing overhead through the lapse of long-standing fuel contracts, which previously helped provide a competitive advantage. This factor is also amplified by the growth the company experienced with success. Southwest is the fourth largest airline and has seen fuel cost skyrocket from 29 percent to 35 percent over a seven-year period.
The correlation between jet fuel prices and oil futures is not 1, because the changes of jet fuel are not exactly the same with the changes of crude oil. After all, they are different products.
1. There are a few trends in the US airline industry. One is consolidation, wherein existing players merge in an attempt to lower their costs and generate operating synergies. The most recent major merger was the United Continental merger, which is still an ongoing affair, but has created the largest airline in the United States by market share (Martin, 2012). Another trend is towards low-cost carriers. In the US, Southwest has been a long-running success and JetBlue a strong new competitor, but in other countries this business model has proven exceptionally successful. The third major trend is the upward trend in jet fuel prices, and the increasing importance that this puts on hedging fuel prices and capacity management (Hinton, 2011).
The purpose of this memorandum is to address the profitability issues at Continental Airlines and to estimate the costs for 2009 to forecast the future outlook of the company. To address these issues, I used regression analysis to observe what effect the 11% reduction in flying capacity would have on the firm’s future operating costs. I also used the results from the regression analysis to verify the costs that, if reduced, would further comply with the implementation of cost-cutting initiatives and operational efficiencies that the company is striving for. Lastly, I consolidated the data to forecast Continental’s financial outlook for 2009, then provided insight
Cost of fuel is also one of Air Canada’s largest operation costs items. Fuel prices have and may continue to fluctuate widely depending on many factors and, therefore Air Canada cannot accurately predict fuel prices. Due to the competitive nature of the airline industry, Air Canada may not be able to pass an increase in fuel prices to its customers by increasing its fares. In addition, Air Canada may be unable to appropriately or sufficiently hedge the risks associated with fluctuations in fuel prices. Furthermore, the impact of lower jet fuel prices could be offset by increased price competition, resulting in decreased revenues. Significant fluctuations in fuel prices could have a potential negative effect on Air Canada.
Low-cost carriers pose a serious threat to traditional "full service" airlines, since the high cost structure of full-service carriers prevents them from competing
Southwest Airlines has been in business for 45 years and it continues to separate itself from its competitors with its extraordinary customer service. In February of 2015 Southwest Airlines was ranked as the number 7 Most Admired Company on FORTUNE’s list. Gary Kelly could not have been more congratulating of his fellow employees by saying "Our common purpose-and passion-allow us to serve our Customers better than anybody else. Our People have set us apart since the beginning, and I congratulate them on this honor."
I choose the topic on differentiation strategies in the airline industry with a focus on Southwest Airline primarily because of the volatility experienced in the airline industry and most especially due to globalization. There are many competitors in the global market, and the airline industry is experiencing the
In the plane engines, the major producers are Rolls-Royce and GE. Moreover, Fuel is continuously the most elevated expense to C.P., since the price has soared starting from 2011. And indeed, nowadays it is sliced underneath US$ 40 (CNBC, 2016), nevertheless, it continuously imposes a serious threat to the profitability of the entire industry.
The airline must benefit from hedging due to the mitigation of finance risk, reduction agency problems of information asymmetry in this section we show the important relation between Aircraft Company and hedging of fuel price and operating cost due add value. The hedging is associated with a lower cost of crude oil, operating cost comprehensive set of controls and finance specifications. Hedging initiating firms of airline experience a drop in the cost while suspension firms sustain a jump. We perform an extensive set of robustness tests to address the possible issue of endogeneity, competitive. We further show that hedging leads to a drop in the cost of debt by reducing higher oil price risk and the level of
In this financial crisis is thrown important question is that hedge titled large or small to airlines. Aviation Cost Risk management provide a unique model allowing for a main test the value of shareholders in fluctuation price oil and reflection that on airlines stock holders risk management using the hedging that an expect the implications of rising or low jet fuel prices related to cash flows, and finance is positively correlated to the level of costs jet fuel in this kind of industry the reason for that costs expensive operating jet fuel have a huge part of expensive operate airplanes company . The hedge provides a chance to buy assets through finance at the low price of oil. This
Despite Cathay Pacific is one of the foremost players in the airline industry in Asia-Pacific, there are still powerful competitors such as Singapore Airlines, Qatar, and Emirates Airlines. And the fee of fuel is its most significant ratio of the fixed expenses for these. According to data from the financial report of 2015, the fuel cost of Cathay and Dragonair was about HK$ 16,619 million, declined by 11.6%, in contradiction of the 2014’s. However, it was due to the dramatic slump from 2014 (Cathay Pacific Annual Report, 2015).
The success of budget airlines forced traditional operators to lower their prices by adapting internet sales and yield management techniques. However they still struggle to compete with low prices offered by the LCCs. Further reductions in traditional airline ticket prices are expected.