More from IC article6 Nov 2025 05:50
More from IC article
Chief executive József Váradi acknowledged on an earnings call in July that Wizz would need to rein in growth plans, stating that it was in talks with Airbus for deliveries of its planes to be “moderated”.
“The overall growth rate is going to be taken down [from] 20 per cent to around 10-12 per cent over the course of the next two to three years” to avoid excess capacity hitting rates, Váradi told investors. He added that Wizz will need fewer of Airbus’s A321 XLRs capable of flying longer distances, given its retrenchment into Europe.
Bloomberg reported last month that Wizz is in talks with Airbus to defer the delivery of up to 100 planes until the 2030s.
There will “probably be a bit of negotiation” about a settlement for delaying deliveries, Furlong said, but given the long list of customers Airbus has lining up for its planes, he doesn’t expect this to be punitive.
“At the end of the day, Wizz will still be a substantial Airbus customer,” he said. “A lot of this will probably be moving deliveries to the right.”
The other major change for an airline that has traditionally leased most of its fleet is that it eventually intends to own about half.
The downside to this is that “it does add more leverage” to the balance sheet, chief financial officer Ian Malin told investors in July. Given a €4.7bn debt pile at the end of June, or a leverage ratio of over 4 times, this may have to be done slowly. In the long run, though, having the planes on its balance sheet should reduce the level of lease payments and support an improvement in margins.
Analysts’ views on Wizz are as wide as its valuation metrics. A price/earnings ratio of 43 times for the current year reflects the low earnings forecast but falls to under 10 times based on 2027 numbers.
Based on the Acquirers’ Multiple, Wizz still looks cheap at an enterprise value of three times operating profit. But as Barclays analyst Andrew Lobbenberg recently argued, “there is much uncertainty about Wizz as a business and investment case at the moment”, with a potentially wide range of outcomes.
A capital markets day that was due to take place in September was placed on hold until November, but no date has yet been announced. Buying the shares before then would be taking a bit of a flyer
Sign In
Follow the stocks
