Master Caution
AJ's got till 2016 to either destroy the place in its entirety or attempt to turn the thing around.
He's declared the last 4 to 5 years his grand plan would turn QF around by 2016.
Buried in an article in The Australian on Friday was this glimmer of hope from analysts following the rational decision to hold off on capacity increases:
The move prompted analysts at JPMorgan to upgrade the airline to overweight after a comprehensive review of its earnings forecasts.
They revised their fiscal 2015 underlying pre-tax loss estimate of $325.8 million to $134.6m and forecast pre-tax profit the following year of $300m, up from $112.7m.
The underlying pre-tax loss for this year was left unchanged at $620m but the share price target was rolled forward to June 2015 and increased to $1.47.
....
Analysts at CIMB also welcomed the signs of rationality in the market.
However, they noted the Australian aviation environment “remains as bad as we have seen it’’.
The analysts, who have a neutral rating on the stock, are *expecting Qantas and Virgin Australia to between them make a combined full-year pre-tax loss of $1bn.
That broke down to $770m at Qantas and $202m at Virgin. “Nevertheless, we see improve*ment coming as capacity growth subsides in both domestic and international markets,’’ they said, predicting Qantas would return to profitability in 2016.
A $300m profit in 2016 would probably place QF Int close to breakeven at that time if the usual suspects (QF Dom, QFF and a lesser extent JQ
) continue to contribute their share of profit as per previous years.