Not surprisingly, the new management regime and the old board members of Qantas (who must be feeling the pressure to resign after the Alan Joyce controversial exit) have called in the public relations (PR) big guns. And it comes as the media just can’t let go of the furore that exists over the PM and his son in the Chairman’s Lounge. This adds to the pressure on the airline that its former Irish CEO can no longer call home.

You might say I’m adding to the ‘pile on’ from the media, but I have a more material interest in the whole subject because my subscribers to the Switzer Share Report will want to know if they should dump their Qantas shares or buy more! This chart shows the airline has been under pressure from:

1. The heat of Alan Joyce’s involvement in Anthony Albanese’s son getting a golden ticket pass to the Chairman’s Lounge.
2. Qatar copping a ‘No’ from the PM’s Transport Minister Catherine King on more slots for its planes here in Australia that could help lower the cost of flight tickets via more competition for Qantas.
3. The above Government support for Qantas when many Australians are feeling the pinch from the rising cost of living, with the cost of flying making holiday and business trips historically expensive.
4. The ACCC’s decision to sue Qantas after the national carrier looks like it deceived customers when it sold tickets for more than 8,000 flights that were already cancelled!
5. The fact that the Morrison Government gave Qantas enormous protection during the pandemic and despite

its $2.27 billion profit for 2022-23, Alan Joyce has refused to pay back its monetary help from JobKeeper, which other big firms have done. (Mind you, I don’t think smaller businesses that haven’t seen their profits fly high after the pandemic need to be pressured to repay JobKeeper payments as they are still under bottom line pressure because of the lockdown era.)

6. And then there’s the magnitude of Alan Joyce’s payout figure. This is how abc.net.au reported it: “Joyce also sold most of his $17 million worth of Qantas shares in June, which was done with the approval of the airline’s board. Adding his $4.3 million cash bonus to the equation, his “golden handshake” final payout is valued at about$22 million”.

Despite all the swirling PR problems that Qantas has, Sky News revealed that Alan Joyce is entitled to four free international flights and 12 domestic flights for each year he has been in leadership (that’s 60 international flights and 180 domestic trips)! That's on top of the $125 million he's earned from Qantas since he took over as chief executive in 2008. Tell that to a regular Qantas flyer who can’t get a good price on even one ticket!

Qantas post-Alan Joyce has become a target and the media, who aren’t in the Chairman’s Lounge, are enjoying exposing the politicians who are in the Lounge and therefore don’t hang out with their constituency when they fly. Today in the SMH, David Crowe tells us Aussies don’t like elite lounges for their pollies. “A clear majority of the public wants politicians to turn down free club membership from Qantas amid a political storm over the company’s influence over government decisions, while 64 per cent also believe more foreign airlines should gain the right to fly to Australia to boost competition,” Crowe reveals.

“An exclusive survey shows 70 per cent of voters think it is unacceptable for political leaders to accept the free membership of elite clubs such as the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge, while only 16 per cent back the widespread practice among all major parties.”

To try and turn around the bad press and brand damage, Qantas has scrapped the expiry date on $570 million of flight credits following the ACCC’s decision to sue them. Sensibly, new CEO Vanessa Hudson has ‘flown in’ Boston Consulting (BCG) to try to reinstate our love for Qantas. This is what BCG tells us about its work: “BCG helps global and regional financial institutions build for the future using digital innovations and an ESG focus to drive fundamental change and deliver on evolving customer demands.” Its website adds more to the description about what it can do: “Boston Consulting Group is a global consulting firm that partners with leaders in business and society to tackle their most important challenges and capture their greatest opportunities. Our success depends on a spirit of deep collaboration and a global community of diverse individuals determined to make the world and each other better every day.”

Yep, Qantas needs help from an outfit like this but there will be some Aussies who’ll question why the airline went to a US business to repair its broken relationship with Aussies. I’d like to say the airline knows what it’s doing but its recent history makes me wonder.

Against this backdrop, you’d think the expert company watchers for investment banks and stockbroking firms would be giving the airline the thumbs down for investing, but the opposite is the case!

A survey of company analysts on the website FNArena says the consensus of experts see a 41% rise in the Qantas share price. But it gets better, six out of six analysts like the company’s profit and share price prospects, with five out of six company assessors thinking a 25% to 63% rise in its share price is on the cards!

The table below shows the analysts’ love for Qantas.

Over the weekend, the AFR revealed that even with their 130 red flags they look for when they size up a company to invest in, Plato Investment Management thinks the Qantas share price will fly higher! At the core of Plato’s assessment is the dominance it has in the domestic aviation market and our national preference to want to call Qantas home when we fly overseas, even after nearly 15 years of Alan Joyce dwelling in the company’s cockpit.

By the way, in the early days of Joyce, the Qantas share price nosedived to around a dollar and some big names of Australian business wanted to take the airline over. Today its share price is $5.52 even after a 15% fall in the price over the last six months.

To be objective, Joyce turned the Qantas share price around by cutting costs, annoying staff and turning the airline into a marketplace that sold everything from holidays, wines, insurance, banking services and a whole lot more. He also valued the frequent flyer programme astutely.

My summation is that while Joyce as CEO could do profit-making really well, he was never great at public relations, which isn’t surprising as he majored in science and maths at university. Now his number is up at Qantas, the new CEO Vanessa Hudson (another numbers person being the company’s former Chief Financial Officer) is calling in the big guns of PR to help her get us to re-love this historic Aussie icon. While they have a big task ahead of them, it seems the experts who weigh up the profits of a company and its future share price are already on board!