Westjet

MGT 3460 Finance in a Global Environment

WestJet Airline Ltd

Prepared by:

Shan Xue

Submitted to:

Professor: Darren Balderson

April 12

WestJet is a Canadian low cast, non-unionized airline based in Calgary, Alberta and it was founded in 1996 by a group of investors which lead by Clive Beddoe. It started its services with only three aircrafts and 220 employees servicing five western Canadian cities by that time. On August 1999, WestJet initial public offered 25 million common shares and they have increased their total assets by total of $301.4 million dollars (WestJet). Therefore, the company has had more than enough fund to upgrade their hardware equipment such as aircrafts purchases and new head office construction, also the leaders decided to invest the money in high technology. WestJet also announced a variable voting share structure into capital structure. Moreover, Most of the services that Westjet offered are done on a one to one basis, and employees of Westjet are also shareholder in the company, therefore their personal success is tied to the company’s success.

As today, WestJet has become the Canada most preferred airline that own and control by Canadian and Canadian only. WestJet owns 100 Boeing next – generation 737 aircraft and offering more than 80 destination cross North America, Central America, Mexico and Aribbean. It is also the first airline in North America to launch the electronic boarding pass system that accepted cross Canada. WestJet’s most direct competition includes Air Canada, Air Transat, Sunwing Airlines and Porter Airlines. Although the market competition is very fierce, WestJet continues to grow. According to WestJet 2012 annual report, we can find out the revenue of $3,437.4 million that an increase of 11.6 per cent from $3,071.5 million in 2011; the yield increased by 3.2 per cent over 2011; earnings per share of %1.78 which increase of 67.9 per cent from 1.06 per share in 2011.

Westjet has been building...