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Always on the ground during the crisis: the Easyjet fleet
Photo: Arne Immanuel Bänsch / DPA
The British low-cost airline EasyJet is planning a capital increase worth billions.
With the issue of new shares, the airline wants to collect around 1.2 billion British pounds.
At the same time, the airline rejected the takeover offer from a prospective buyer, as the company announced.
The Easyjet share price plummeted on the stock exchange.
There is still no official information on who made the takeover offer.
Insiders confirmed to the news agencies Reuters and dpa, however, that it should have been the Hungarian airline Wizz Air.
This message has not yet been confirmed by Easyjet.
The board of directors rejected the deal because the company was rated too poorly, they say.
The conditions were unacceptable, said Easyjet boss Johan Lundgren.
The bidder has meanwhile declared that it is no longer interested.
The fresh money should be invested in growth
The analyst Daniel Roeska from the analyst firm Bernstein does not believe that Easyjet needs a capital increase.
The British could invest the fresh money in growth instead of using the income from ongoing business to improve their balance sheet, he wrote.
On the London Stock Exchange, the Easyjet share price fell by almost 14 percent at times during the day.
Even in the early afternoon, the price is eleven percent in the red.
The airline had suffered severely from the corona pandemic and travel restrictions since 2020.
Better through the crisis
Wizz Air, also listed in London, got through the pandemic better: The airline is benefiting from the east-west labor migration in Europe, as many Eastern Europeans want to fly home cheaply.
For example, Easyjet only offers 57 percent of its pre-crisis capacity from July to September, while rival Ryanair had 75 percent of the passengers on board from the same month in August.
Wizz Air came in at more than 85 percent.
jlk / dpa / Reuters
