Originally Posted by
domaus
Does everyone realise that for the last 5 years QF have been selling assets such as catering and airport terminals? The airport terminals generated over 1 Billion in sales alone. Melbourne sold last year for just under $355 million for example. This has been reported to fund Project Sunrise and aircraft purchases. But they can't sell assets forever. Clever of Joyce to do so, to leave on good terms.
The leases were going to end anyway and it was a smart move to sell them back to the airports early and capitalise on their greed, instead of waiting until later and getting nothing for them.
Catering was a sad departure but the economies of scale with DNATA owning hundreds of catering centres and bulk purchasing ability was not sustainable compared to Qantas with 3-6 centres and not benefiting from the same economies of scale. Yes, they could have done some sort of joint procurement with One World but I'd say most of it's airline partners don't operate catering centres anyway.
The sales are shown separately on the balance sheet also and they don't reflect the underlying profitability of the company which would still be there regardless.