Originally Posted by rickair7777

That does not say that market cap is the sole metric, and it's definitely not.

In fact it's possible for the actual value of the company to approach or even exceed market cap if the market is way down, in which case you've got yourself a smokin' deal.

A low market cap combined with lots of cash (or even other hard assets) makes you a tempting and realistic target. In other industries that could even set you up to get bought, dismantled, cash looted and assets auctioned off... there are people who specialize in making a quick and large profit that way and all it takes is a handful of people and access to enough cash or credit to gain a controlling interest.

Fortunately for us, in this era the fed would not allow an airline acquisition by someone who just wants to part it out, so potential buyers need to be able and interested in actually running an airline without losing their arse. So we're a very niche market, mostly other airlines or people who have experience with airlines.