But it's Delta's money do with as they wish(within fiduciary guidelines)....they would make money...a lot of money....so as a stock holder I go YEAH....you can go BOO...again I get it

BTW...if given a chance to vote they would vote to give themselves ALL the profit....leaving none for us....yes...I do think if given the opportunity they would strangle the golden goose, just short of killing it, if they thought that would maximize their total return.....thus I find your question without merit....nobody turns down MORE good stuff

Deuces

 

You're just rambling. Mesabah was your (or his argument) "people don't accept more good stuff"?

Am i illiterate here? I cant track any of this.

 

I am not really getting your point. From what I learned from my Finance professors in college, the stock buyback/dividend aspect is a function of the book value of the company.

Both of you and Mesabah are correct in ways. Cutting a dividend usually is not a good thing for a share price. If the stock price is extremely high vs what the company is worth, it would have been better for the shareholders to issue a special dividend vs buying the stock back.

A very good case in point. I invested a very large part of my claim sale in 3 US Bank stocks (a commercial, custody and investment) when the European Contagion threat drove their share prices down after the banks were recapitalized after the 2008 financial collapse.

As the old saying goes, “‘Greed’, got us into this mess, and ‘Greed’ will get us out of it.” So, it was about a $100,000 position. It was time to put some capital to work at such an opportunity.

When their share prices have been at or below book value, after the federal stress tests, they have bought back stock in slugs of equity off the open market. My percentage of ownership has increased over time. It has been a great investment for my retirement. This is even when they have awarded dividends.

If a stock buy back doesn’t reduce outstanding share count, at a good value, a dividend would have been a better choice for allocation of capital.

YMMV

 

[QUOTE=Buck Rogers;2870277]Is carl spackler back? (Been a while since we’ve seen a reply with all these embedded quotes)

 

I didn't know this! You would think they should just base their compensation on total earnings (not on a per share basis), so that they can't manipulate it by shrinking the denominator.

 

The company proxy states the majority of executive compensation comes from stock. Apply the duck test to buybacks.

 

Because its all a matter of degree. I realize some are grabbing their pitchforks and acting like every penny a company makes should be allocated to the workers or whatever. Obviously (or at least it should be) this doesn't work.

I'm not against a dividend or even some of the buybacks. But 14B is very hard to defend in this industry because these days will not last forever and when they end, and they will, we will desperatly wish we held back a small fraction of that as well as further invested another small fraction into the business.

SWA almost put 1-2 legacies under (really under, like Ch7 gone bye bye under) from a lucky hedge bet that netted them a what...1B/yr advantage during a tough time? They spammed key markets and almost put thousands of pilots and others out of work and it only barely didn't succeed. This will happen again and when it does we (and others) won't be prepared for it. The only option at that point will be shrinking to profitability while yielding marketshare (regardless of to whom) and probably trying to raise a tiny portion of the burnback billions by issuing more shares at firesale prices.

So you may have "bought out a partner" but if the inevitable is because of how much you paid to do so you will later have to sell to numerous other partners and for much cheaper, then what point is it other than bonus time today.

14B lit on fire is impossible to defend. Acting like these salad days are eternal and this level of largess is sustainable is is the corporate equivalent of climbing over the fences and past the warning signs to take a selfie on the edge of a cliff because it looks cool.

As for us, its contract time and its very reasonable we get significant gains in all areas and that can happen with far less than the burnback monies; I don't look at the 14B and counting as all ours.

We should at the very least peel some of that off to invest in still much needed infrastructure. Do we have multipile redundant failsafe I.T. systems to stop the next meltdown? Does every jetway have high volume cold air? Does every station have adequate tugs and towbars? Do we still have rusted jetways that act up? Do we have enough agents and ground crew to get ground air on and be there for flights promptly? Are the salaries paid in certain markets sufficiently competitive to motivate our mission critical personnel to show up during a record cold snap/etc?

We could fix all of those issues for a small fraction of the 14B and counting lit on fire mostly for the indirect compensation of those making the decision to do so.

We can have dividends, buybacks, infrastructure and employee investments. Its the out of scale emphasis on the burnbacks that many are concerned with and its driving outrage far outside our industry and giving fodder to literal socialists to sway moderates because of it. No one will win from this, other than the golden parachute private island money crowd in the short term. You're free to defend it to this scale, but its not going to work out very well for any of us in the long run.

 

It's a catch-22, because billions sitting around become a target for corporate raiders in the airline industry, always has been that way. There are really two choices for the money, either it goes to the employees, or management/shareholders in various forms. Buybacks are for management alone.

 

Thank you!! I didn’t want to get baited into the argument. You summed up the future risks of burying this money in stock, and all the other areas that could use a cash infusion that are being ignored.

Back during the APU sheriff days, it frustrated me to no end that Delta wanted us to take the time to fill our FCR’s when the jetway air wasn’t working or was inadequate. In ATL, the ramp agents work the same gates all day....they know by their second aircraft of the day whether the AC system is working or not. Why is it incumbent on me to fill out a form online later in the day that could be handled with one phone call from a ramper in between flights? It COULD be fixed by the time I get a chance to fill out an FCR. I’ve noticed lately, jetway air doesn’t keep the airbus cool in many stations. LAS, SAT, and AUS are usually pretty good but a couple million could have all of our stations set up with great ground air.

 

I believe this is the start of what many of you are asking for throughout this buyback debate.....

https://beta.washingtonpost.com/busi....co/CwBdnVuaLf