Writing a promissory note in times of inflation is like getting a tattoo of a passing love interest you met in Maspalomas: it's hard, but it hurts less with age. TUI has returned to the bold strokes of the promissory note, that old trick that smells like an office with worn carpeting and a full ashtray. It's been six years since the German tourism group last dared to scribble its signature on a debt document without a mortgage backroom. But times change, and airplanes, like the mistresses of magnates, cost a fortune.
Now they've slapped on a €250 million promissory note to buy their own wings, the ones they had leased like someone renting a wedding suit. The transaction comes in fixed and variable rate tranches, with an average coupon of 4%, which in this Europe of hysterical interest rates is like smoking a cigar at an austerity funeral. The term: three to five years. The purpose: to buy the planes before they rise further in price and continue flying without having to ask permission from the landlords of the skies.
TUI wants to stop paying rent to ride the clouds. It prefers to buy, even if it's with debt ink. The promissory note doesn't increase net debt, they say, as if the paper weren't a burden on the financial burden of someone who still has 32,5 million euros outstanding from the 2018 issue, maturing in 2028.
On the stock market, the gesture didn't go down like a champagne toast. The share price fell 1,27% to €7,93. But what does the share price matter when what you're buying is sovereignty over the fuselage? There's something romantic about that. As if TUI, the former glory of charters and all-you-can-eat resorts, wanted to regain some corporate dignity with a promissory note.
