After a torrid 12 months, Rolls-Royce Group (LSE: RR) shareholders might finally have something to look forward to. After reporting an underlying pre-tax loss of almost £4bn for 2020 on Thursday, the aero engine maker told the BBC that “the worst is behind us.” The results didn’t make much difference to the Rolls-Royce share price, which has remained flat.
The key thing, for me, is the cash situation. Rolls told us it has strengthened its liquidity to £9bn, with £7.3bn of new debt and equity. I’ve been largely convinced in recent months that this would suffice. And I feel more confident of that now, after hearing that the company is aiming to reach positive free cash flow during the second half of 2021. Rolls also hopes to see the figure reach as high as £750m “as early as 2022.”
That has to be very much up in the air right now, though, as so much depends on our lockdown easing progress. I have mixed sentiments myself, and I see that in the market’s approach to the stock over the past few months. The Rolls-Royce share price saw something of a resurgence starting in October, on the back of positive coronavirus vaccine results. But that has eased off a bit and we’ve seen the shares fall back a little.
A bad year, but I’d feared worse
The implied level of caution is understandable. Even after the late 2020 uptick, we’re still looking at a 38% fall over the past 12 months. And to get the full feel of the pandemic impact, we need to look back to mid-February, which is when the stock market crash kicked off. Since then, Rolls-Royce is down 50%.
Rolls-Royce makes its money from service and maintenance contracts for the engines it sells. It’s similar to the old Gillette razor model that Warren Buffett likes so much — sell the razors cheap, and then make the profit on the blades. That can be a profitable strategy during good times, and it has kept the Rolls-Royce share price going for decades. But just as shaving didn’t happen quite so often during lockdown, the same can be said for flying, but more so.
With airline fleets close to grounded, engine flying hours in 2020 came in at just 43% of 2019’s figure. That’s tough on the Rolls-Royce business model, but it’s actually not as bad as I’d feared. It resulted in underlying revenue of £11.7bn, down from £15.4bn. And again, I’d been expecting worse than that. But would I buy now?
Where will the Rolls-Royce share price go now?
Rolls says it’s expecting engine flying hours to recover a bit in 2021, to around 55% of 2019 hours. And the company hopes to be back to 80% in 2022 as a base case. The problem is, the outlook is still so very uncertain. There’s clearly pent-up demand for holidays. But we really don’t know when it will be safe enough to fly, or whether any problematic Covid variants will emerge.
I can see a case for the Rolls-Royce share price going either way in the remainder of 2021. And, though Rolls is a company I have long admired, I will wait and see.