KUALA LUMPUR: AirAsia X, AirAsia’s low-cost long haul affiliate carrier, will go public this year.
CLOSE AND PERSONAL WITH FERNANDES: Fernandes fielding questions from journalists. At left is The Borneo Post’s Joanna Yap.
However, Datuk Seri Tony Fernandes, Group CEO of AirAsia Berhad, told reporters yesterday that the company had yet to set a date as the listing will depend on their performance.
The company is also exploring the viability of a dual-listing.
“I think that AirAsia’s stock has been so undervalued; we’re the cheapest airline stock in the world. Part of it is in not understanding the model. So, we may need to go to a market which understands the business more,” said Fernandes.
He confirmed that plans to list Thai AirAsia and Indonesia AirAsia were on schedule and would likely occur in the second half of this year. He also confirmed earlier reports that AirAsia had no plans to implement a fuel surcharge until oil prices hits US$100 per barrel.
Fernandes said one way the airline accomplished this was by raising their load factor, which had been better than anticipated.
Another factor was that the airlines’ ancillary income – mainly from their online operations – had been showing strong growth.
“We used to do RM20 a passenger, now it’s RM40 per passenger. It’s growing about 20 per cent per annum,” said Fernandes.
“At every stage, we are trying to reduce costs to make it easier and cheaper for people to travel.”
He explained: “We can’t serve everyone everything they want if we want to keep reducing fares. We can manage not to put fuel surge by doing some of the things we are doing, like pushing more people to the internet, continuing to reduce costs by putting food online so we don’t have wastage of food. All that reduces a lot of cost.
“Our key is ultimately the passenger so that they have the lowest fare. That’s how we’ve been able to expand,” he added.