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Hard times for Norwegian

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Hard times for Norwegian

Old 28th Feb 2021, 11:56
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Just planning to run Nordic routes from June/July after examinership, if they survive, perhaps expanding to Spain 3rd qtr 2021 if demand and finances allow. Even ramping up from 10 airframes to 50 is a 500% increase.
The real discussion is not how many but IF..
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Old 2nd Mar 2021, 16:46
  #1162 (permalink)  
 
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10 738s being foreclosed as collateral for previous security, auction at the end of March
Article (in German) - https://www.aerotelegraph.com/boeing...ngsversteigert
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Old 2nd Mar 2021, 16:50
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So that's the end?
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Old 2nd Mar 2021, 20:43
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These airframes were the assets of Torskefjorden Leasing Ltd which was wound up by the courts on Jan 15th as the judge decided the company would no longer be viable as the only client NAS would not be able to pay for the leases.

Friday the court will decide if the guarantees can be repudiated. At the moment creditors are offered 4% of their debt in settlement and perhaps some cash, but being warned the cash is less the longer the process goes on. Its a cat and mouse game at the moment but Norwegian have advised they may not successfully exit the process if deals can't be struck.

As part of the Irish process, which is due to conclude by April 16, the Irish High Court will rule on Friday on whether to allow the airline to repudiate liabilities, including three aircraft subleases and 25 guarantees tied to aircraft leases.

A lawyer for Norwegian on Tuesday confirmed to the court that agreement had been secured on the last of 36 aircraft leases it had been seeking to repudiate.


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Old 8th Mar 2021, 08:27
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Let's see how things pan out, if the full rescue plan is approved and the creditors don't appeal the required fund raising efforts should start. There are still some flies in the ointment, Boeing USA is an unknown sword, although the guarantees are removed the orders are "active" and the required settlements agreed to Airbus and other creditors have added another 1 billon to the funds needed, now standing at just under 2 billion to get off the starting blocks.
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Old 8th Mar 2021, 08:34
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I wouldn't get your hopes up.
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Old 11th Mar 2021, 20:23
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Not much point in having a creditors vote other than to satisfy Norwegian Law
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Old 11th Mar 2021, 20:49
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In a liquidation scenario we expect the claims to exceed NOK 80 billion due to breach of contract obligations and other accrued liabilities, ref. Annex 5.

In addition, NAS also owe accrued holiday pay for 2020 (with approx. NOK 35 million - in total for all NAS employees in Norway, Denmark and Sweden). Employee claims are, subject to the limitations in section 9-3 of the Creditor Recovery Act, considered to be first priority claims. The total amount of first priority claims from employees in a liquidation scenario is assumed to amount to a total of approx. NOK 115 million for the 472 NAS employees. The amount includes both the accrued holiday pay, and salary and holiday pay throughout the notice period as defined in the Norwegian Working Environment Act (Nw.: “Arbeidsmiljøloven”) section 15-3.
And all other non Scandi employees get nothing..Nice

Realistically, if they can survive it will be 2022 before any operations outside of Norway start
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Old 11th Mar 2021, 23:04
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6 private investors and 6 fonds lined up so the planned 3 billion nkr capital injection is oversubscribed, acording to this article: https://finansavisen.no/nyheter/luft...gian-emisjonen
Founder and former CEO Kjos is one of them and on on his way back according to this article: https://finansavisen.no/nyheter/luft...se-i-emisjonen

(Both articles in Norwegian and paywalled but what is visible of them for free says a lot)
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Old 12th Mar 2021, 07:06
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I would say that the 53 aircrafts in 2021 are set artifically low to get through the process. Clever move to ditch the old and expensive aircraft leasing contracts during the reconstruction as these are normally non-terminable. That will give them a competetive edge as they ramp up again. Goal is around 70 aircrafts for 2022, enough to fortify the Nordics?
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Old 12th Mar 2021, 08:47
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If Kjos gets involved again it will be groundhog day at Norwegian. Not only did he bury the company in debt, even after the difficulties he tried manipulate the share values.

However, on March 25, the carrier’s shares shot up by 35% when HBK asked short-sellers of the stock to return shares it had lent out, Reuters reported at the time.

“HBK Holding AS has decided to request redelivery to HBK of the shares in Norwegian Air Shuttle ASA currently having been lent in the market by HBK,” Kjos said.

“HBK needs some better liquidity. In a world where we do not know what will happen next week and hardly enough today, we called back the shares to have complete freedom and access to all our assets,” Kise wrote in a comment, also at the time, to the online business newspaper E24 Næringsliv.
The "new management" have done a good job in cleaning up the cat's litter tray, it would be a great shame if things returned to the "bad old days"
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Old 12th Mar 2021, 09:42
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Question is did the new management, and the current chairman, have the right financial contacts to pull together investors for the necessary fresh capital injection or is Kjos the one to make that happen. After all the current management have burned the so far investors more than twice in less than 1 year. Not only has Kjos a winning personality, he has money of his own to invest and that creates trust among others with money. Norwegian rolled him out last spring also when they needed money. Its not all about saving a few jobs.
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Old 12th Mar 2021, 11:50
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Kjos certainly has the right connections and his family have just dumped shares one Bank Norwegian after they climbed on rumours Nordax would buy the bank, so they are cash rich at this time. It depends if Kjos just sees Norwegian as an investment opportunity or a long term relationship. Either way, burnt suppliers, including CAE, Euro Control and even Facebook will be reluctant to do business without prepayment and injected cash must be sufficient to settle old debts and pave the way forward.

The other issue is the "new proposal" is almost identical to the "old proposal" with unsecured creditors taking a 95% hit on their debts and waiting up to 3 years to get settled. It may well be some object on the basis there may be nothing left in 3 years anyway and with inflation the 95% hit is already over 100% in real terms. It is by no means certain, although probable that the court will approve the planned restructure of debts.
In any event, crews in UK and Spain will be left out in the cold for the remainder of 2021.
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Old 12th Mar 2021, 13:00
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How many UK and Spanish crew will be able to come back? Specifically the Spain crew, they were on ERTE before Covid (already excess of crew) and with the fleet reduction (affecting also Spain) I wouldn’t be very optimistic

Last edited by Paul737; 12th Mar 2021 at 14:06.
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Old 12th Mar 2021, 14:12
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Same goes for the italian crews, also abandoned with not even a thank you.
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Old 12th Mar 2021, 17:11
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Same goes for all the Swedish, Danish and Finnish crews as well.
​​​
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Old 12th Mar 2021, 17:40
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I would say Swedish, Danish and Finnish crew will be back before the Spanish crew. Not all of them but some.
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Old 12th Mar 2021, 20:59
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Paul737

Considering Spanish crews are still employed and the company is still paying a part of their taxes I don't see how the crews that no longer are contracted will be called first. Also the company considers this ERTE time as employed thus counts for the seniority and that is not the case for fired employees.
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Old 12th Mar 2021, 21:53
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Because CPH, ARN and maybe HEL bases (definitely the first two) will open before any spanish base, if they ever open again. Spanish crews are not in the same situation only because you are now on ERTE FM, which is a different case than a simple ERTE, but when the force majeure ends...
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Old 12th Mar 2021, 22:15
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737Driv3r

Not quite, If you look at the list of creditors it is obvious NAS are not actually paying anything, merely accruing debts, only essential day to day costs are approved by the examiners as any use of funds potentially reduces money available in the case of liquidation.
If they survive they will initially keep to the Nordics as they owe so much money outside of Norway that forward payments would be needed and they cant afford that, perhaps after some time cash flow may allow further expansion but if you look at the current cash burn versus the investment proposal , they would still need significant revenues from pax to keep going more than 6 months.
If they sack the Spain crews they will automatically have another bundle to pay out and its easier to leave them as "employees" at effectively nil cost. The proposals make it crystal clear that only Scandi crews would get payments in the event of liquidation, LGW LH crews are an example of the shafting.
One has to take the Kjos hype with a large pinch of salt, if the "offering" is so attractive and "oversubscribed" why are shares falling like love sick angels.
BALPA and GAL don't expect a presence at Gatwick in the near future and remember NAS have no slots anymore.
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