Soaring Flybe hints at flotation

By THIS IS MONEY
Updated:

 

A STARTLING two-year turnround from a moribund, heavily loss-making, business people's airline to Europe's third-largest low-cost carrier has seen Flybe soar into profit and possibly a stock market flotation within 18 months.

Flybe, a regional carrier that used to trade as British European before discovering the low-cost models of Ryanair and easyJet and thems to be saved by selling tickets on the internet, today reported a £14m pre-tax profit for the six months to end-September against a £3.1m loss in the same period in 2003.

Flybe does 80% of its business within the UK, including lucrative Channel Islands and Northern Ireland services, and while the winter months, in common with most airlines, will bring trading losses, profitable out-turns this year and next will, according to managing director Jim French, see it calling in the City.

French says Flybe, owned by the family trusts of late steel magnate and former Blackburn Rovers sugar daddy Jack Walker, is using today's results to warm up the Square Mile for either a flotation which it could start planning from next year, or an outright sale.

'We are priming the pump but also taking the opportunity to raise an understanding in the City that we aren't Ryanair or easyJet,' he said. 'We are a value airline - offering great prices but also a few valued extra services. Unlike the others we concentrate on markets either domestically or where there are second homes in France and Spain, where there is continuous repeat business rather than 'single visit' markets which require price stimulation.'

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