Seven investment banks will wrap up their pitch meetings with Virgin Australia today as the race to win a lead role on the airline’s initial public offering gathers momentum.
Virgin Australia could select as many as four investment banks as so-called lead managers on the IPO within the next two weeks.Wolter Peeters Virgin’s selling point to investors will be its focus on Australian domestic travel, short-haul international, leisure travel, and the cost benefits of having less debt and a smaller, cheaper fleet of aircraft to maintain.The growth of the airline’s Velocity frequent flyer program is another intriguing talking point for bankers. Velocity, the country’s third-largest loyalty program, has 11 million members, and roughly 2000 people join it daily, Virgin said in December.
In the early days of the pandemic when demand for travel cratered, all the major US carriers from United Airlines to American Airlines leveraged the cash flow from their frequent flyer programs to raise billions of dollars in capital.