Indigo's Revival Bid
After a brutal year, India's largest airline looks to bounce back, but there could be surprises ahead
On March 25, 2020, all 259 aircraft of India's largest airline by market share, IndiGo, were grounded as the government suspended commercial flights - domestic and international -indefinitely due to rising Covid cases. While Indian aviation has seen numerous ups and downs, the March-May 2020 period was the worst-ever.
As the market leader and the country's largest low-cost carrier (LCC), the scale of damage for IndiGo was bigger than the rest. While revenues stopped coming, fixed costs started eating into profits, and in turn, cash reserves. In April, agencies such as CAPA India predicted a loss of $1.5 billion for IndiGo and SpiceJet over the next six months. The impact was so brutal that some brokerages stopped tracking the sector, and IndiGo in particular. "We believe the impact on aviation sector will be severe and the ability to forecast financial consequence is difficult today, given the evolving nature of the situation. We are dropping the stock (IndiGo) from our coverage in the short-to-medium term," Geojit Financial Services said in a note issued in May.