Originally Posted by gloopy

That concerns me as well. And once again the buyback is being timed at recent high water marks. Of course they are predicting (read: hoping) the upward trajectory will continue in perpetuity, but when in a positive market/environment don't they? Like you said, the last buyback was very similar to this. IMO this is not the right way to do it either.

I do like the continued product/facility investment capital stratedgy, although TBH I'm not sure what 2-2.5B/yr translates to in real life regarding new aircraft and various product improvements we would continue to see. Is that amount enough to really pull into the fast lane and take the lead, or is that what everyone is spending within the giant wave of eventual fleet refreshment, etc?

I like the continued agressive debt reduction. Free financing from the fantasy printing press can't go on forever, so when the costs of borrowing start to soar, and they will, 7B is a whole lot better than 17B, or even 10B. Of course it could be a lot less than that if we weren't "returning" money to day traders, fund flippers and robotic sector ETFs. I'd much rather push the shares up by running an even better company with an even better product with an even better balance sheet. That money could/should IMO be spent winning marketshare from the competition and generating an even higher yield premium. If we are going to "give back" to anyone it should be the employees and frequent flyers.



Another potential bright spot in our 5 year plan is the "extra" pension obligation payments. What I don't have a grasp on, and which is critical, is what that amount translates into, once again in real life. While we have been technically "funding" them, its my understanding that we have been pumping up the actuarials with an insane fantasy 9% ROI in invested funds. Of course the only way to get that kind of return consistently is to keep the kitty in risk and hope it pays off. We have been playing it safer, which is great because it guarantees we won't lose it when the next "correction" happens, and it will (big time) once the current era of bubble money pops, so we have been getting around a 1% ROI in real life. So is this "increase" in pension funding really an increase when adjusted for the reality of little to no return on safely invested capital, and is it even enough to keep funding at current obligation levels in perpetuity?

I'm not against share buybacks per say, but how nice would it have been to buy some back at the $6-$7 range just 2 years ago versus $19+ now? It seems like they only move to do things like this in a perpetually reverse arbitrage stratedgy. That seems awfully hard to stay ahead of IMHO, especially in a volitile market surrounding an even more volitile industry that always acts like each upswing is a permanent paradigm shift.

Its all probably geared towards another merger anyway so we can inherit monsterous debt levels from whoever we get and it won't look as unmanageable. We'll see.