It would probably be handy to get a few things straight here. Rex is not Compass. Rex's foray into jet operations is not a new business/start-up, it's an expansion. As such the financials are a little bit different. The expansion will have some fixed costs associated with it that do not generate revenue (AOC set up, route set-up, flight/cabin crew training, etc) - that's what a chunk of the PAG seed money is there for.
And note, the $150 million is structured in three $50 million tranches. PAG are not mugs, there will be internal hurdles and triggers associated with the draw downs. Moreover, the whole PAG deal is completely underwritten by an equity stake in the business - if the expansion goes pear-shaped, PAG will end up owning half of Rex (which would return to its mildly profitable regional roots). At this point Rex have drawn down their first $50 million tranche and would almost certainly be getting ready to dip into the second.
Any old how, because you've got that big chunk of set-up costs that need to be paid back you don't want to be adding to those costs, so once you pull the trigger your initial operations should at the very least be coming close to breaking even. That's likely not the case at the moment. No one would have planned for 80 percent load factors right out of the gate but you can bet your bottom dollar that the business plan would have had something like 50 percent load factors for month one. And that was likely on a nine return flights a day basis. They almost certainly have not hit that target. And April's planning target will be a notch up again on March.
More broadly, if you look at a basic measure like asset utilisation, that's not flash. First flight is at 0700, last lands at 2130, six flights in each direction on a super simple point - point shuttle. Compared to the majors, they are undercooking utilisation by at least 15 percent and that's leaving aside the fact that one of their then four jets was sitting at Wagga for most of the first month.
Their original business plan was for nine return flights a day, Sydney - Melbourne. Despite all of Sharpie's carry on they most assuredly had sufficient aircraft to manage that but they didn't - one factor would have driven that change of schedule. They've then been a bit over the shop with where to next - Brisbane, Adelaide, Gold Coast, etc Now, no plan survives contact with the enemy but you generally like something that has had a few months work put into it to hold together longer than a few weeks.
And they had a rejected take-off out of Sydney in week 1 and some sort of tech issue with RQC which very luckily for Rex didn't get picked up by the media. So, all in all, a less than stellar start.
Next month, things don't get easier for Rex, ostensibly they get harder, and harder by at least an order of magnitude. OOL and ADL come on line which means that (a) they won't have the luxury of two spare jets to cover for RQC's next tantrum and (b) they'll have to manage a more tightly integrated schedule.
As to naysaying, calling stuff as it is is not naysaying. To be successful, Rex's expansion needed a lot of intermeshing moving parts to come together pretty much perfectly - thus far, I don't think that we are seeing that.
In the long run, as the Zen Master said, "We'll see."