BRS stock crashing
New bid contracts in the recent cut throat era, probably not so profitable. Longer term contracts have built in escalations which protect the helicopter operator against general inflationary increases, OEM hourly price rises and even price rises caused by pilot and engineer pay rises under union contracts. If the bid price was right to begin with, they should make reasonable money. In 2014, helicopters were in demand and contract prices were peak. If a helicopter operator can't make money under older long term contracts then they either didn't bid the right price or don't manage their business very well.
There is a rule of how many non pilots and engineers you can have hanging off the skids before your helicopter won't get airborne. Guess what, $ million dollar salaries even for CEOs are very heavy. Even if its managed properly, the helicopter business doesn't enough money to have layers of "management" on multi million $ salaries.
There is a rule of how many non pilots and engineers you can have hanging off the skids before your helicopter won't get airborne. Guess what, $ million dollar salaries even for CEOs are very heavy. Even if its managed properly, the helicopter business doesn't enough money to have layers of "management" on multi million $ salaries.
I agree the big helicopter operators have too many management layers adding to the operating costs without offering much in return, making it hard for them to compete with the leaner / meaner operators they used to be like as well.
Sadly I feel like it will be curtains for Bristow, can't see them recovering from this because of the lack of leadership & vision, hope I'm wrong.
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How many of those "peak" contracts are still being honoured by the oil companies or did most of them called in their 90 day “get out” clauses as soon as the downturn hit and re-tendered to the lowest bidder because bottom line is king, not safety or anything else they preach it to be?
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Other ‘highlights’ are of course it’s business as usual, plenty of money in the bank, engines were in the wrong place which meant lenders were not happy (?), a plan to move debt around on the balance sheet and although not quite saying it, suggesting that the accounts issue might not be as bad as it sounds.
I guess it might keep some happy for a while.
How many of those "peak" contracts are still being honoured by the oil companies or did most of them called in their 90 day “get out” clauses as soon as the downturn hit and re-tendered to the lowest bidder because bottom line is king, not safety or anything else they preach it to be?
When the Titanic hit that iceberg and started taking on water....the passengers and crew were told the ship was unsinkable as I recall.
When you hemorrhage money the way Bristow is...and no team of Surgeons are able to control it....then this shall not end well.
The Oil business....and Bristow who has its major focus on that segment of the industry....when the Oil Companies catch a cold....Operators like Bristow catch Pneumonia.
I recall a famous comment from a very senior Bristow Manager...."We make money operating helicopters....not selling them!"....when I asked why we had one of the world's oldest fleet of aircraft.
The look I got when I suggested the money from either method looks the same when it is in the Cash Drawer.....indicated I was not apt to be moving up that greasy pole of management.
That applied to many such ideas of how to diversify the Company's Operations so as not to be so reliant upon a single sector of business.
When you hemorrhage money the way Bristow is...and no team of Surgeons are able to control it....then this shall not end well.
The Oil business....and Bristow who has its major focus on that segment of the industry....when the Oil Companies catch a cold....Operators like Bristow catch Pneumonia.
I recall a famous comment from a very senior Bristow Manager...."We make money operating helicopters....not selling them!"....when I asked why we had one of the world's oldest fleet of aircraft.
The look I got when I suggested the money from either method looks the same when it is in the Cash Drawer.....indicated I was not apt to be moving up that greasy pole of management.
That applied to many such ideas of how to diversify the Company's Operations so as not to be so reliant upon a single sector of business.
I recall a famous comment from a very senior Bristow Manager...."We make money operating helicopters....not selling them!"....when I asked why we had one of the world's oldest fleet of aircraft.
BRS is partially diversified with UK SAR which is a huge contract at decent rates based on press releases and the 10Q and 10K filings ($220m per year) Compared to other operators, UK SAR puts BRS in a theoretically good position and they should be able to make money. Sure, others are hurting with the oil downturn but without the cushion of UK SAR apparently not hurting quite as badly as BRS.
Last edited by industry insider; 14th Feb 2019 at 11:34. Reason: added 10Q UKSAR revenue
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Has Bristow ever posted a profit since Jonathan Bailiff became CEO? All he seems to be any good at is constant (ineffective) reorganisation which add more and more senior executives on enormous salaries which are obviously totally undeserved in view of the way the company is bleeding money. Yet, despite this Bailiff is leaving with a huge pay off. Shame on the man!
But that rather presumes you can extract money from the UKSAR contract to prop up the mother company.
ISTR the idea behind the UKSAR project was for it to be a loss leader to prove the concept that could then be sold on to other countries.
ISTR the idea behind the UKSAR project was for it to be a loss leader to prove the concept that could then be sold on to other countries.
To answer Mitchaa's question above about structuring it's pretty complex and all to do with tax, EU rules and Aviation regulatory oversight.
Both CHC and BRS are US listed firms with largely US ownership. This means to operate in Europe they have to have a majority EU owner which means partnering in some shape or form with an EU owned and controlled entity. CHC's partner (from memory) is the family office of a major high street clothing chain owner for example. For the record, this is extremely normal. Therefore if and when the minority shareholder goes bust, in theory the major shareholder becomes the only shareholder (for the sake of clarity, let's call them S1 for use below). That's fine at the company ownership level but the question then becomes can S1 now exercise control of an aviation business without the assistance of BRS in this case who provided the operational oversight, hiring of crew, aircraft, PBH contracts, maintenance etc? The answer is probably not, at least at first.
It gets worse of course. The aircraft for the BRS UK entity will likely be on a bareboat charter from another entity within the BRS group of companies. This means the aircraft they are flying if the parent of BRS goes bust will likely cease to be legally available to S1 as their relationship ceased to exist the moment they filed for Ch 7. S1 will therefore have no legal control potentially of the aircraft.
Now, if the aircraft are owned it's very hard to see them taking off the day after filing for Ch 7 or the creditors pulling the plug. It's come and get the money time. Some of the aircraft might be financed by a small consortium of banks so they are secured but not against 1 owner so decision making becomes very difficult very fast. If they are leased, clearly it's in everyone's best interest to get them back off the ground again and making money but the leases need to be re-written potentially.
Now it's time to add the regulator into the picture. One of the founding principles of getting an AOC is that you have a business case to have one. Clearly BRS in it's current guise do not so the regulator could withdraw the AOC, or at least suspend it until the mess descibed above has been tidied up.
It's not beyond anyone that it gets fixed but it's not as simple as 'the UK entity is fine' owing to how the businesses are structured globally these days. Not saying it will happen for sure, but potentially it's a mess which will take weeks to fix.
NWS
and 212man - Shell with CHC 2016....
Both CHC and BRS are US listed firms with largely US ownership. This means to operate in Europe they have to have a majority EU owner which means partnering in some shape or form with an EU owned and controlled entity. CHC's partner (from memory) is the family office of a major high street clothing chain owner for example. For the record, this is extremely normal. Therefore if and when the minority shareholder goes bust, in theory the major shareholder becomes the only shareholder (for the sake of clarity, let's call them S1 for use below). That's fine at the company ownership level but the question then becomes can S1 now exercise control of an aviation business without the assistance of BRS in this case who provided the operational oversight, hiring of crew, aircraft, PBH contracts, maintenance etc? The answer is probably not, at least at first.
It gets worse of course. The aircraft for the BRS UK entity will likely be on a bareboat charter from another entity within the BRS group of companies. This means the aircraft they are flying if the parent of BRS goes bust will likely cease to be legally available to S1 as their relationship ceased to exist the moment they filed for Ch 7. S1 will therefore have no legal control potentially of the aircraft.
Now, if the aircraft are owned it's very hard to see them taking off the day after filing for Ch 7 or the creditors pulling the plug. It's come and get the money time. Some of the aircraft might be financed by a small consortium of banks so they are secured but not against 1 owner so decision making becomes very difficult very fast. If they are leased, clearly it's in everyone's best interest to get them back off the ground again and making money but the leases need to be re-written potentially.
Now it's time to add the regulator into the picture. One of the founding principles of getting an AOC is that you have a business case to have one. Clearly BRS in it's current guise do not so the regulator could withdraw the AOC, or at least suspend it until the mess descibed above has been tidied up.
It's not beyond anyone that it gets fixed but it's not as simple as 'the UK entity is fine' owing to how the businesses are structured globally these days. Not saying it will happen for sure, but potentially it's a mess which will take weeks to fix.
NWS
and 212man - Shell with CHC 2016....
Oil Co - Drop your price
RW - No we have a valid and very nice contract
Oil Co - Ok you are hereby served 90 days notice as per that contract
RW - Ok if we take our pants down can we get an extension at a lower rate
Oil Co - Maybe.
And repeat.
It's business, no one should take it personally if your company is being wildly overpaid for a service your customers can go out and procure for a lot less today with very little blow back, why not do it? Sucks to be us in the bad times but in the good times it's great.
It gets very interesting though as the thought continues to develop when you think about who BRS's customers are and what they lose by allowing BRS to disappear. Is it possible BRS could be saved by a client whom they are majorly exposed to? Chevron? Conoco? Exxon? They all have the money and have been known to dabble in aviation before. Unlikely but for spending $60m-100m on stock and buying the debt at probably 5-20c on the $ at the moment, it could happen.
RW - No we have a valid and very nice contract
Oil Co - Ok you are hereby served 90 days notice as per that contract
RW - Ok if we take our pants down can we get an extension at a lower rate
Oil Co - Maybe.
And repeat.
It's business, no one should take it personally if your company is being wildly overpaid for a service your customers can go out and procure for a lot less today with very little blow back, why not do it? Sucks to be us in the bad times but in the good times it's great.
It gets very interesting though as the thought continues to develop when you think about who BRS's customers are and what they lose by allowing BRS to disappear. Is it possible BRS could be saved by a client whom they are majorly exposed to? Chevron? Conoco? Exxon? They all have the money and have been known to dabble in aviation before. Unlikely but for spending $60m-100m on stock and buying the debt at probably 5-20c on the $ at the moment, it could happen.
Oil Co - Drop your price
RW - No we have a valid and very nice contract
Oil Co - Ok you are hereby served 90 days notice as per that contract
RW - Ok if we take our pants down can we get an extension at a lower rate
Oil Co - Maybe.
RW - No we have a valid and very nice contract
Oil Co - Ok you are hereby served 90 days notice as per that contract
RW - Ok if we take our pants down can we get an extension at a lower rate
Oil Co - Maybe.
I have seen price escalations in the downturn because they were in the contract, I have seen contractors, not just aviation, hold the line on prices when under a contract with no threats or bullying. Do a good job as per contract and most importantly know the customer and what they want.
II, I respect your experiences but after a good number of years in the hummingbird's commercial department I assure you that is most definitely not mine. I wish it was. Depends how good your lawyers/ contract drafters are I guess. And how desperate your competition are.
Sadly in this market almost all we have had is desperation and the race for revenue.
Sadly in this market almost all we have had is desperation and the race for revenue.
and 212man - Shell with CHC 2016.... 
It doesn’t a work as simply as that. Negotiations during a tender phase can be tough. But once the contract is signed it’s actually strong for both parties and normally prevails. The rules around asking for a discount are very complex. To threaten termination to get a discount would be unheard of in any company with which I have had an association.
I have seen price escalations in the downturn because they were in the contract, I have seen contractors, not just aviation, hold the line on prices when under a contract with no threats or bullying. Do a good job as per contract and most importantly know the customer and what they want.
16% jump.....astounding rebound....all the way up to $1.39.
https://www.thestreet.com/quote/BRS.html
https://www.thestreet.com/quote/BRS.html
