QF Shares hit $1.00 Discuss
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I'm bemused by all the talk of high fuel bills - has anyone looked at Platts lately?
Over the last 3 months, the price globally has *dropped* by about 17% in US$ terms, though it has started to upturn again in the last few days.
What's the AU$ done against the US$ in that time - gained about 5%?
Can someone explain to me why fuel surcharges continue to increase?
Regards,
BD
Over the last 3 months, the price globally has *dropped* by about 17% in US$ terms, though it has started to upturn again in the last few days.
What's the AU$ done against the US$ in that time - gained about 5%?
Can someone explain to me why fuel surcharges continue to increase?
Regards,
BD
Tartare:
I'm sorry Tartare, but you just don't get it. Nobody, especially not me, is denying the right of any company to trim its workforce or make major changes for self preservation. However what all of us are commenting on is the totally inept, inefficient way Qantas is trying to do it!
If your organisation needs to kick the staff in the backside and downsize then you do it, but you do it FAST and CLEAN!!! You do not do what Qantas has been doing for at least Ten years:
- Destabilising and stressing their workforce.
- Presiding over an endless "change process" of reviews by consultants and self aggrandizing management - immortalised by Margaret Jackson.
Today it appears to me that any Qantas employee is totally uncertain about their future which is an absolute and major dereliction of duty by the Board and Management.
As CEO you get to lose sleep over dealing with uncertainty and thinking the unthinkable - it is your job - managing and coping with uncertainty in order to give your frontline staff a certain predictable work environment in which they can deliver high quality goods and services to your customers.
Your staff are not paid to deal with uncertainty, YOU are! Yet what does Qantas management do???? Maximises staff uncertainty which leads to rotten morale and low quality performance.
To put that another way, what do you think would have happened to Air New Zealand if Fyffe had announced a nine month consultants review after which unspecified cuts would be made? What if the staff were constantly bombarded with messages designed to divide and conquer= "maybe you will have a job next year and maybe not"? What if he had stayed in some ivory tower in Auckland all the time instead of showing himself to the staff and leading by example?
When I joined NZ, one of the first things that Robbie and a certain ex NZ employee who is now working for you did - was sack 600 LAMEs.
They outsourced heavy engine maintenance.
Holy heck - the sh1t hit the fan.
The unions screamed - circulated the usual photos of busted engines repaired with seatbelts - dire warnings about safety, loss of certain trades forever etc.
The media were in an uproar.
Do you know what happened?
Precisely... nothing.
The jets kept flying, no-one died, the airline didn't stop.
That move sent a very important message - don't mess with us, we are going to reform the business whether you like it or not.
And they did - the next stop was corporate - approx 20 per cent cost out.
It was brutal.
But it was also a clear commercially focused message to the workforce that things had to change - and were going to.
They outsourced heavy engine maintenance.
Holy heck - the sh1t hit the fan.
The unions screamed - circulated the usual photos of busted engines repaired with seatbelts - dire warnings about safety, loss of certain trades forever etc.
The media were in an uproar.
Do you know what happened?
Precisely... nothing.
The jets kept flying, no-one died, the airline didn't stop.
That move sent a very important message - don't mess with us, we are going to reform the business whether you like it or not.
And they did - the next stop was corporate - approx 20 per cent cost out.
It was brutal.
But it was also a clear commercially focused message to the workforce that things had to change - and were going to.
If your organisation needs to kick the staff in the backside and downsize then you do it, but you do it FAST and CLEAN!!! You do not do what Qantas has been doing for at least Ten years:
- Destabilising and stressing their workforce.
- Presiding over an endless "change process" of reviews by consultants and self aggrandizing management - immortalised by Margaret Jackson.
Today it appears to me that any Qantas employee is totally uncertain about their future which is an absolute and major dereliction of duty by the Board and Management.
As CEO you get to lose sleep over dealing with uncertainty and thinking the unthinkable - it is your job - managing and coping with uncertainty in order to give your frontline staff a certain predictable work environment in which they can deliver high quality goods and services to your customers.
Your staff are not paid to deal with uncertainty, YOU are! Yet what does Qantas management do???? Maximises staff uncertainty which leads to rotten morale and low quality performance.
To put that another way, what do you think would have happened to Air New Zealand if Fyffe had announced a nine month consultants review after which unspecified cuts would be made? What if the staff were constantly bombarded with messages designed to divide and conquer= "maybe you will have a job next year and maybe not"? What if he had stayed in some ivory tower in Auckland all the time instead of showing himself to the staff and leading by example?
Last edited by Sunfish; 16th Jun 2012 at 21:59.
I blame the new schools of management that churn them out unable to make decisions without hiring consultants.
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Hmmm, interesting, is it the fault of the schools for turning these people out? or the board for continuing to employ these people, pray tell??
why not make a decision, and come to your own conclusion on that?
why not make a decision, and come to your own conclusion on that? 
short flights long nights
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Sound Familiar?
ABC The DRUM
The story of Fairfax's decline is one of managerial failure. The company has been run by senior executives and boards with no direct experience of running a media company. Instead, leaders at Fairfax have been property developers, management consultants, accountants, and rugby players. Those people did not have the experience or understanding of a people-media business to steer the ship into safe waters. Instead, they allowed Fairfax to remain at sea while competitors savaged the business. One by one Fairfax was stripped of its classified advertising "rivers of gold". The jobs went to Seek.com.au; cars to Carsales.co.au; homes to Realestate.com.au.
And shorn of those easy revenues, the only way Fairfax CEOs could "stay in the game" was to cut costs faster than revenues fell (all the while pocketing eye-watering salaries and bonuses).
Instead of having the foresight to embrace and invest in the digital age by bringing together mastheads to work collegiately, Fairfax leadership instead chose to separate the online team from the print team and run them as two distinct businesses, with "Fairfax Digital" competing for advertising revenues with the so-called "Fairfax Publishing". In 2007, I was asked to lead a team of three senior executives to visit the most progressive newspaper/media companies in the US and UK and report back to the then CEO, David Kirk. We went to the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, The London Telegraph, The Financial Times and The Guardian.
We reported back to Kirk that every one of these had brought together "print" and "digital" into one resource; that is, one editorial team, one advertising team and one back office. Kirk flatly opposed doing the same on the grounds the two businesses were both very profitable. And he wanted to keep it that way.
Five years later, with the company's market value slashed from $7 billion to just over $1 billion, this integration will finally be imposed next month.
And for the first time in living memory, the change will be led by a former journalist and senior editor, the CEO, Greg Hywood, along with the advice of consultants Bain & Co (Mitt Romney's crew).
But it's too late to save the Fairfax we know. The share price has collapsed from $5 to 60c or less because no one in the market believes there is a coherent strategy for the company. And that has left the company weak and defenceless to predators such as Rinehart.
- For Fairfax read Qantas...
- For the lovely Gina read Messers Dixon et al...
- For 'Team of Senior Executives' read any one of several unions ...
And finally why can this get written up in mainline media straight away and not the Qantas debacle?
The story of Fairfax's decline is one of managerial failure. The company has been run by senior executives and boards with no direct experience of running a media company. Instead, leaders at Fairfax have been property developers, management consultants, accountants, and rugby players. Those people did not have the experience or understanding of a people-media business to steer the ship into safe waters. Instead, they allowed Fairfax to remain at sea while competitors savaged the business. One by one Fairfax was stripped of its classified advertising "rivers of gold". The jobs went to Seek.com.au; cars to Carsales.co.au; homes to Realestate.com.au.
And shorn of those easy revenues, the only way Fairfax CEOs could "stay in the game" was to cut costs faster than revenues fell (all the while pocketing eye-watering salaries and bonuses).
Instead of having the foresight to embrace and invest in the digital age by bringing together mastheads to work collegiately, Fairfax leadership instead chose to separate the online team from the print team and run them as two distinct businesses, with "Fairfax Digital" competing for advertising revenues with the so-called "Fairfax Publishing". In 2007, I was asked to lead a team of three senior executives to visit the most progressive newspaper/media companies in the US and UK and report back to the then CEO, David Kirk. We went to the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, The London Telegraph, The Financial Times and The Guardian.
We reported back to Kirk that every one of these had brought together "print" and "digital" into one resource; that is, one editorial team, one advertising team and one back office. Kirk flatly opposed doing the same on the grounds the two businesses were both very profitable. And he wanted to keep it that way.
Five years later, with the company's market value slashed from $7 billion to just over $1 billion, this integration will finally be imposed next month.
And for the first time in living memory, the change will be led by a former journalist and senior editor, the CEO, Greg Hywood, along with the advice of consultants Bain & Co (Mitt Romney's crew).
But it's too late to save the Fairfax we know. The share price has collapsed from $5 to 60c or less because no one in the market believes there is a coherent strategy for the company. And that has left the company weak and defenceless to predators such as Rinehart.
- For Fairfax read Qantas...
- For the lovely Gina read Messers Dixon et al...
- For 'Team of Senior Executives' read any one of several unions ...
And finally why can this get written up in mainline media straight away and not the Qantas debacle?
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Please tell me how any experience "media" directors would have helped save Fairfax... Fairfax has been attacked by the Internet - ie New Media, an industry that didn't exist 10 years ago.... meanwhile it has been strangled by an inflexible workforce, high cost structure and entrenched workforces....
Now does that sound familiar.
Now does that sound familiar.
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Opportunities missed by Management
Fairfax was at a crossroad ten years ago.It should've began developing an online presence then.Instead over the same 10 year period it has invested $3.5 Billion and seen profit decline and losses accrue to over $400 million.
That sounds more familiar:No vision,no forward planning and capital squandered on the wrong plant
That sounds more familiar:No vision,no forward planning and capital squandered on the wrong plant
Nunc est bibendum
Fairfax is dying because they sell a crappy product and have taken their readers for granted having presumed to tell them what's good for them. They're not prepared to listen to outsiders, they're not prepared to spend the money where it's needed. Qantas would NEVER be accused of that. Oh, wait......
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Plane Talking has another piece of Qantas today, no two, as the other is about more seats and less dunnies on the reconfigured A380s which sounds more like pissing on the customers than pissing them off.
Qantas A380 refit means more seats less toilets | Plane Talking
I cut this out of the second item looking on what other analysts think of Qant.
At the end Ben hints Qantas was late telling the ASX about its loss because a deal with Emirates fell through at the last minute. .
Qantas A380 refit means more seats less toilets | Plane Talking
I cut this out of the second item looking on what other analysts think of Qant.
this analysis is a reminder that if Qantas continues to reduce its exposure to international operations in order to somehow become better placed to expand it in the future, it is toast. Every time Qantas retreats, whether in terms of modern fleet acquisitions, or physical network, or through a failure to address by whatever means, new fast growing city pairs, its competitors advance.
There is nothing like a Qantas vacuum to attract alternative carriers. And once they are in place, like Emirates, or Cathay Pacific/Dragonair to Hong Kong or China, future dislodgement is problematical. Opportunities in air transport can’t just be put in the ‘fridge for future use. They have to be taken when they arise, or forever lost.
There is nothing like a Qantas vacuum to attract alternative carriers. And once they are in place, like Emirates, or Cathay Pacific/Dragonair to Hong Kong or China, future dislodgement is problematical. Opportunities in air transport can’t just be put in the ‘fridge for future use. They have to be taken when they arise, or forever lost.
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From Plane Talking:
Jetstar is a really good reason to fly Singapore Airlines, or Cathay Pacific/Dragonair
Qantas Asia chances critiqued, and a note from Emirates | Plane Talking
Ben is close to the nub of the flying rat woes:
Ben is close to the nub of the flying rat woes:
Planetalking:
A more interesting issue is why Emirates would issue such a statement in Australia? It closely follows the recently brief excitement over a possible closer relationship with Emirates, which closely followed Qantas suddenly remembering to make an exceptionally late filing of a profit downgrade to the ASX, with devastating consequences for the share price.
No answer is offered here, other than to note that Qantas is under the dual threats of a rating downgrade and a leveraged buy out, assuming the risks for a private equity punt at this stage, in terms of global finance, and locally, in terms of the state of Qantas, are not too high
A more interesting issue is why Emirates would issue such a statement in Australia? It closely follows the recently brief excitement over a possible closer relationship with Emirates, which closely followed Qantas suddenly remembering to make an exceptionally late filing of a profit downgrade to the ASX, with devastating consequences for the share price.
No answer is offered here, other than to note that Qantas is under the dual threats of a rating downgrade and a leveraged buy out, assuming the risks for a private equity punt at this stage, in terms of global finance, and locally, in terms of the state of Qantas, are not too high
piston broke again
.....seems someone is selling !.
Share Trading software showed QF as a sell on Mon 2 May when the price was around $1.71 so the 'smart' started to get out 7 weeks ago. This may have been due to 'inside' information or the fact that QF is going to spend most of the next 5 years making less money than it costs to fund the airline's operations.
Should the World economy 'fall over' in the next 2-3 years anything could happen with QF.
.....seems someone is selling !.
Share Trading software showed QF as a sell on Mon 2 May when the price was around $1.71 so the 'smart' started to get out 7 weeks ago. This may have been due to 'inside' information or the fact that QF is going to spend most of the next 5 years making less money than it costs to fund the airline's operations.
Should the World economy 'fall over' in the next 2-3 years anything could happen with QF.