JetBlue Sells Stake to Lufthansa

Filed in archive Aviation Travel on December 13, 2007

JetBlue just got a little German. Today, the once popular discount airlines decided to sell almost one-fifth of its stake to German carrier, Lufthansa. The struggling airlines will receive over $300 million dollars to help with a few setbacks, namely, the raising cost of fuel.

"We view this as strictly a financial transaction," JetBlue CEO Dave Barger said in a conference call about the investment.

The investment is the first by a European carrier in an established U.S. discounter, though Briton Richard Branson's Virgin Group, parent of Virgin Atlantic, owns 23% of start-up discounter Virgin America. Dutch carrier KLM at one time owned part of Northwest Airlines.

For its money, Lufthansa will be getting 19% of JetBlue and the right to name one new member to the company's board. It is paying $7.27 for each of the 42 million JetBlue shares to be issued. That's a 16% premium over JetBlue's closing price on Wednesday. In Thursday trading, shares shot up 14% to $7.15. JetBlue's stock traded above $30 in late 2003.

The deal allows Lufthansa to leverage the euro's strength against the dollar to buy cheaply into the U.S. airline business.

JetBlue began flying in early 2000 with the initial backing of financier George Soros and several private-equity funds. In its early years, its share price soared as investors responded heartily to the low-cost carrier's near-instant profitability, its live in-flight TV and rapid growth. But the carrier's sagging financial performance since 2003, and an embarrassing string of operational breakdowns that included a disruption of its operations at New York John F. Kennedy airport in February, forced it to slow its growth and replace much of its senior management.