Case Study : Jetblue Ipo Valuation Finance

JetBlue Airways, the latest entrant in the airlines industry has gone through the initial stages (entrepreneurial and collectivity) of the organizational life cycle rapidly under the successful leadership of David Neelman. JetBlue Airways is currently in the formalization stage of the life cycle where in it needs to create procedures and control systems to effectively manage its growth. Also as it proceeds to grow further to reach the elaboration stage, JetBlue needs to continue to align itself with the environment in order to maintain its sustained growth.

JetBlue is a pro at utilizing its resources and structure. As such, JetBlue has proven to be efficient in its internal environment. Out of the physical and human aspects of the internal environment JetBlue focuses on human as the key factor. JetBlue views its employees and their skills as the key to a successful structure by emphasizing elements of loyalty, satisfaction, service quality, productivity, capability, and output quality. JetBlue reflects a culture of employees that understand how to retain customers and can perform under various situations with an equally varied consumer base. In addition to human capital, JetBlue uses physical assets to set them apart from the rest. The airline fleet of JetBlue is very precisely selected. From its new Airbus A321 to its Airbus 320, JetBlue prides itself on comfort and luxury. Other perks offered by JetBlue include lower priced airfare compared to that of its competitors and in-flight entertainment options that succeed its competition. Internal weaknesses include a

Before David Neeleman’s non-compete agreement with Southwest Airlines expired, he envisioned the concept of starting a low-fare airline that would combine common sense, innovation, and technology and bring the humanity back into air travel (Gittel & O’Reilly, 2001). In 1998, JetBlue was born. In order for David to fulfill his goal of a “do-it-right” kind of airline, he needed to recruit superior industry veterans who were willing to start from scratch and place an emphasis on employees and customers. Each of these individuals, from the President, General Counsel, CFO, and the HR director, wanted to create an airline that was fun, had

The stock market has increased from 1.896 in ’86 to 4.789 in ’95 thus creating an incentive for DLJ to offer an IPO. Strategy involved being the IPO allowed employees to exchange their compensation plans for shares and options in DLJ thus giving them an incentive to stay with the company. There were also many advantages and disadvantages related to DLJ going public. Advantages included DLJ increasing liquidity and allowing founders to harvest their wealth, permitting founders to diversify, facilitated raising new corporate cash, established value for the firm, and increasing the potential markets. Disadvantages included the cost of reporting, new disclosure requirements, self-dealings, a possibility of inactive markets reducing price, the firm losing some of its control, and a higher degree of investor relations had to be maintained.

JetBlue is an American airline company whose headquarter is located in the New York City. They are a low-cost airline who is rapidly growing in the Unites States. According to Wikipedia, “David Neeleman founded the company in February 1999, under the name "NewAir.” Many of their approach come from Southwest Airlines include low prices airfares. However, they differ in the amenities offered to the customers.

The key external factors like the growth in the economy, disposable income, and fuel prices have negatively affected JetBlue. It was compelled to change its strategy several times and in 2011 had an income of $86 million down from $97 million in 2010. The growing consumer interest in leisure travel has positively affected JetBlue. The success of JetBlue has been attributed to growing consumer interest in leisure travel.

To find the cost of equity we used the formula rs = rRF + beta*MRP in which rRF2002 = 5.86% and the Market Risk Premium (MRP) = 5% as calculated by the Southwest Airlines finance department. We then calculated the beta for Southwest Airlines based on a regression analysis of five-year monthly returns on Southwest stock from January 1997 to January 2002, compared with the S&P 500 returns over the same period. This regression analysis indicated that Beta = .2219. Therefore,

David Neeleman, CEO of JetBlue Airways and his management team have realized that JetBlue is still making profit despite the many challenges facing the airline industry after the September 11th 2001 terrorist attacks. Despite these positive returns; JetBlue plans on raising capital through an Initial Public Offering (IPO) to support its aggressive growth and to also offset portfolio losses to their venture capital

JetBlue Airlines, a low-fare commercial airline, has planned to go public towards the end of 2001. During the process the firm had restructured their initial price from $22- 24 per share to $26 – 28 per share.

JetBlue has been one of the most successful airlines since it first entered the industry in December of 1999. Founder, David Neeleman, set out to succeed by offering low-cost air travel in hopes of perpetuating his services to as many people as he could across the US. He was very adamant about having a very customer oriented business that catered to the needs of all. In doing so he wanted to emphatically promote his obligation to safety, caring, integrity, passion, while allowing the customers to have fun while traveling. There motto helps portray Neeleman’s belief stating “You Above All”. His primary goals had been to follow Southwest’s objectives of offering low rates to customers, focusing on customer’s needs and comforts while distinguishing itself with their amenities. Neeleman’s other goal was to establish his low-cost leadership strategy by concentrating his airline in a large popular metropolitan area that already is already correlated with high airfare (Peterson, 2004). He then began operating based out of the New York metropolitan area at John F. Kennedy International airport with his secondary locations in Washington D.C., Boston and Los Angeles.

The financing decision which is aimed at securing the purchase of the new 100-seat Embraer E190 aircraft would allow JetBlue to enter smaller markets while maintaining low operating costs, and increase flight frequency on existing routes. The low fares offered by JetBlue would allow it to attract new passengers who might otherwise not fly. Earnings from this market segment is expected to contribute to the profitability and positive financial performance of the company

From the humble financial portfolio as a crop dusting outfit in the mid twentieth century, to the multi-billion dollar portfolio of a major airline in the twenty first century, Delta Air Lines has risen as a successful business. The airline industry is directly affected by outside economic conditions and is also cyclical in nature. These factors make it very difficult for airlines to make predictions to stay financially afloat. Delta has ridden the bumpy path of the last twenty years and managed to survive. In the past twenty years there has been many events that

Jet Blue decided its IPO price should be in the range of $22-$24 per share and communicated this to the investment community. The underwriting team at Morgan Stanley forecasted excess demand from investors for the 5.5 million shares of the Jet Blue IPO, and subsequently filed for an increase in the share price to a new range of $25 to $26 per share. After raising the stock price, Jet Blue and Morgan Stanley felt that there was still tremendous demand and became worried of that the share price was still too low. Management became concerned and fragmented opinions surfaced on how to proceed. The US economy remained stagnant and the airline industry was especially hit hard; failing to offer the share price at an equilibrium price could potentially hamper Jet Blue’s access to the capital markets in the future and affect the market value of the company.

Moreover, according to John Owen, JetBlue had prepared the initial registration statement with security and exchange commission (SEC) for the IPO on September 11, 2001. However, based on the September 11 attacks, they delayed IPO before it came into force. In fact, not only the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, but several events happened negatively affected the global economy during the period of going public for JetBlue. For example, the contagion of bird flu was quite severe during taking flights, which definitely influenced the demand of flights. The increasing oil price also raised the basic cost in any transportation industry. Another negative condition could be the economic downturn, including crash of the dot-com bubble and financial crisis in Asia. From this point

JetBlue Airways, the latest entrant in the airlines industry has gone through the initial stages (entrepreneurial and collectivity) of the organizational life cycle rapidly under the successful leadership of David Neelman. JetBlue Airways is currently in the formalization stage of the life cycle where in it needs to create procedures and control systems to effectively manage its growth. Also as it proceeds to grow further to reach the elaboration stage, JetBlue needs to continue to align itself with the environment in order to maintain its sustained growth.