Originally Posted by
Clear Right
While I do agree that eventually AA will attempt a hostile takeover of JB, it's not happening anytime soon. First, they need to finish the US Air deal and complete the merger and seniority list integration, which could take years. Then they need to recoup the reorganization money lost over this period to finance a hostile bid, which again will take years.
In the mean time, it is likely that B6 continues to improve its stock price, I think a year ago it was in the $3.00 range, now it is in the $6.00 range. While not great, it has still almost doubled. Hostile bids are not cheap and I would expect Delta or United to try a bidding war to prevent the AA/B6 domination of the New York market.
And of course B6 will probably be B6/ALPA by then, I wouldn't be surprised to see ALPA after this next drive based on current Delta/United/AMR contracts and the healthcare debacle. That's mt .02cents, which is worth about half of that.
I don't know, but I tend to agree with aa73. It's hard to predict with any certainty a time frame, but it could just as easily be fairly quick as it could be slow. The LCC/AWA seniority list is still a dogfight, but they are merged.
AA, while in bk, still has a pile of cash, and some huge investments lined up. I don't think money will be a problem. And really, on the surface, it wouldn't take that much. JBLU stock has been flat for 4 years, losing about 2% over the past 52 weeks. But the biggie is the market cap is only $1.7B. (for comparison, UAL $8.0, DAL $11.8) IMHO, it would be a heckuva deal right now. 'Course, you're probably right, a bidding war would break out to some degree, if nothing else, to try and make AMR overpay.
But I think as aa73 pointed out, you gotta follow the money and also what's being done in the different markets. Specifically, in this case, BOS. Then you got that big ole' AA terminal in JFK that they currently aren't running at anywhere close to max capacity. At some point, they are going to crank that thing up and it'll be game on in JFK. If I were them, I'd just buy JetBlue and be done with it.
I don't presume to know exactly what the DOT will do, but if recent history is an indicator, they've just been getting outta the way for the most part. Seems the government realizes that a handful of healthy airlines are better than a bunch of sick ones.
Be an interesting few years for sure either way.