In short: The week's first trade idea — an odd-lot Dutch tender arbitrage, sized for small accounts and explicitly insulated from the tape. "If you're Canadian and you're not subject to Canadian withholding tax… it closed on Friday at 27.53 and this Dutch tender is supposed to take place on September 24th, and it's going to be between 29 and 34" (the deck: a C$800M substantial issuer bid at C$29.00-33.00 for up to 27.59M shares, ~9.8%). "The minimum you would make is 5%… you'll likely get closer to the 5 than the 20% type return." The edge is the provision, not the price: "there's going to be a priority allocation without proration for holders of less than 99 shares. So if you own 99 shares across 10 accounts… held separately at a separate broker… you can basically own $27,000 of this… and if you were to make the most you could… you'd make about 4,600. So this is mostly for small traders, but it is something to take a look at." Funding is cash already received — "liquidity proceeds from a recent sale of their Aeroplan loyalty platform" (the deck says a minority-stake monetization).
Air Canada has offered to buy back about C$800 million of its own shares, using cash from its Aeroplan loyalty programme. It is doing so by "Dutch auction": shareholders say what price between C$29 and C$33 (Singh says 34) they are willing to sell at, and the company picks the lowest single price that lets it buy the number of shares it wants. Everyone whose offer is accepted gets that same price. The shares closed at C$27.53 — below the bottom of the range — so anyone who buys now and tenders should receive at least C$29.
The catch in most buybacks is "proration": if more shares are offered than the company wants, everyone only gets part of their shares bought, and the rest are left with you at whatever the market price is. This offer has a special rule for small holders. If you own 99 shares or fewer and tender all of them, you are exempt from that scaling-back and get fully bought. Because the rule applies per account, someone with ten separate brokerage accounts can put roughly C$27,000 to work this way.
The return is modest — about 5% at the floor, more if the auction clears higher — but it is available within about two weeks and has almost nothing to do with where the stock market goes. That is why Singh calls it "mostly for small traders." One important limit: it only makes sense for accounts that are not hit by Canadian withholding tax on the buyback.
Full passage: premium transcript (PDF).
In short: The eyebrow-raiser — an airline brought mid oil-price crisis because current volatility masks a multi-year growth story: premiumization (à la Delta) plus a capex inflection on new aircraft (Airbus A321XLR, first flight this June). The narrow-body connects hubs to secondary European cities with more premium seats (higher revenue/seat) while burning ~30% less fuel/mile, so revenue grows faster than cost → margins toward "high double digits," +5% capacity. EPS ~$1.50 this year → ~$6 by end of decade; on a conservative ~8× that's ~$50, "more than double." Long-term horizon; FCF inflection closer to 2028.
This is the deliberately contrarian pick: buying an airline in the middle of an oil-price crisis, which Letko admits "raises eyebrows." His argument is that the scary headlines hide a real multi-year growth story. Two things drive it. First, premiumization — travelers increasingly pay up for nicer cabins (as they're doing with Delta in the US), so Air Canada can sell more high-margin seats. Second, a fleet upgrade: the new Airbus A321XLR (a single-aisle "narrow-body" jet) can fly Air Canada's hubs to smaller European cities with premium seating, and it burns about 30% less fuel per mile — so revenue can climb much faster than costs.
That combination — higher prices, more capacity, lower fuel cost — should push profit margins up sharply, taking earnings per share from about $1.50 this year toward $6 by the end of the decade. Crucially, you don't have to assume the stock gets expensive ("you don't need to be a hero on valuation"): even at a conservative 8× those earnings, that's a ~$50 stock, more than double today. The big cash-flow turn arrives around 2028, so it's a patient, long-term hold in a name quality enough to survive the bumps along the way.
8:02that sort of a reaction. And so why would you want exposure to an airline in the midst of an oil price crisis? Well, we think the current volatility masks what is an underlying growth story for the company. And if you think about — Driven by what? — Well, driven by a shift in consumer preferences towards more of a premiumization of the airline experience.
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Verbatim excerpts from the public transcripts (auto-pulled at each mention's timestamp, lightly cleaned). Timestamps link into the video; "source page" opens that commentator's full analysis at this row. Click a mention's header line to expand it (one open at a time). For personal study — not investment advice.