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CO Locks in More of Its Fuel Costs

 
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Old Sep 29, 2008, 9:26 am
  #16  
 
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Does anyone know if CO hedged a la UA (who are obliged to buy at the price specified in the hedging contract) or a la SW (who can walk away from the contract if the spot price is lower)? This clearly makes a big difference.
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Old Sep 29, 2008, 1:32 pm
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Originally Posted by yellow77
Does anyone know if CO hedged a la UA (who are obliged to buy at the price specified in the hedging contract) or a la SW (who can walk away from the contract if the spot price is lower)? This clearly makes a big difference.
all I know is that it was with Lehman Brothers.....
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Old Sep 29, 2008, 2:56 pm
  #18  
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Oil down another $10/bbl today. Good news is that even though the hedges will not be beneficial (and may cause a huge loss), the unhedged portion of the fuel needs is getting substantially cheaper.
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Old Sep 29, 2008, 4:02 pm
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Maybe CO's bean counters should hire a real commodity trader. Looking at a chart, it looks to me oil will hit 80 or below before it goes to 120 again, and I'm not even a trader. But I did call two traders who agree more with me than with CO
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Old Sep 29, 2008, 4:10 pm
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Originally Posted by yellow77
Does anyone know if CO hedged a la UA (who are obliged to buy at the price specified in the hedging contract) or a la SW (who can walk away from the contract if the spot price is lower)? This clearly makes a big difference.
I don't know much about it, but I thought crude was a cash settled contract in all cases??????? I think that means if oil popped to $140, CO would still have to pay $140, but would have massive gains on their commodity future contracts that would bring the cost back down????
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Old Sep 29, 2008, 7:55 pm
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The oil fell sharply today on a huge rise in the USD. I'd look for the dollar to fall due to an infusion or $690 billion from the federal reserve to make liquidity(interesting how they were wanting $700 billion and do $690 billion on their own without the powergrab that they had desired from congress!)
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Old Sep 29, 2008, 8:13 pm
  #22  
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Originally Posted by yellow77
Does anyone know if CO hedged a la UA (who are obliged to buy at the price specified in the hedging contract) or a la SW (who can walk away from the contract if the spot price is lower)? This clearly makes a big difference.
I didn't realize that WN's contracts were written that way (apparently only some of them are), though even that approach has some cost on the options should they not be exercised. Obviously if they are exercised it is because the cost is higher than the price of the option, so the incremental cost for the initial option buy isn't as great as the actual fuel costs.

Originally Posted by Steph3n
The oil fell sharply today on a huge rise in the USD.
That explains today, but not the drop from $140+ to ~$95 in the few weeks leading up to today. The US dollar hasn't been that strong in the past few weeks, though the 10% recovery against the GBP was quite welcome while I was there earlier in the month.
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Old Sep 29, 2008, 8:34 pm
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I would imagine they would use a collar
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Old Oct 16, 2008, 11:33 am
  #24  
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Originally Posted by gbryan84
I would imagine they would use a collar
It seems that you are correct about this. From this morning's call:
<Q>: And then just sorry, a very quick one for (indiscernible) the downside strikes on the collars require collateral posting or might they?

<A>: They might and they do, in fact at the end of the third quarter we had $20 million posted Gary and if you would assume $80 price at the end of the fourth quarter we would expect to have roughly $37 million posted. So a lot of those hedges burn off through the quarter.
I don't really understand that completely, but it does seem to me that if the price stays low CO writes off some of the investment but not nearly as much as they would have to if they kept the hedges.
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Old Oct 16, 2008, 11:35 am
  #25  
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Originally Posted by yellow77
or a la SW (who can walk away from the contract if the spot price is lower)?
Looks like LUV (a.k.a. WN) must have some sort of call option on oil futures more than a simple forward/futures contract.
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Old Oct 16, 2008, 12:12 pm
  #26  
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Originally Posted by yellow77
Does anyone know if CO hedged a la UA (who are obliged to buy at the price specified in the hedging contract) or a la SW (who can walk away from the contract if the spot price is lower)? This clearly makes a big difference.
You're never obligated to buy - you can sell the futures contract back to the market, but you would take a loss on the price change.

If I wanted my oil delivered at $100, but the current contract was trading at $70, then it would cost me $30 per contract to walk away from my 'hedge' and start over. That is some serious money - per each contract.

However, as posted above, I believe CO used options to do their hedging, which are a 'cheaper' way to benefit from, or hedge against price changes in an underlying security.
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