Originally Posted by
rickair7777
But you don't actually have to pay for the value of the assets... you only have to pay for 50% of the shares plus one share.
Worth noting that the market caps reflects not only debt and assets, but also perceived profit potential. So you could own a lot of assets with low debt, but still have low market cap if the market thinks you don't know how to make money with your expensive toys. Especially with a large airline where you can't just auction off the parts for cash... .gov will have an opinion on the matter if you try to part out a too-big-to-fail airline in 2026.
In reality you won't get a company for exactly 50% of the market cap though... in order to actually get enough shareholders to sell all at once you need to offer an acquisition premium which is sometimes north of 50% of market price. Possible exception if one entity holds 51% and wants to get rid of it (not likely for airlines)..
Then why do you think it was that Alaska was never bought out? Just looking at market cap there were several years where Alaska’s cash in hand practically could have paid for company.
I experienced the acquisition premium firsthand when a company I had private shares in was acquired by much larger company. It was roughly 3x book value.