Designing For A Small Space

This set-up may not entirely fit your aesthetic, but I’m seriously thinking of trying it out.  (Thanks, Mel!)

Did you see Stephen Colbert explain the impeachment inquiry as a children’s story Monday night?  “Once upon a time,” he began, “Donald Trump called the president of Ukraine and asked the foreign leader to investigate Joe Biden. The end.”

Right?  Plus, a thousand other reasons.

But just that one malfeasance is WAY worse than lying to cover up a wildly inappropriate — but legal and consensual — extra-marital affair.  Which in an earlier era would never have come to light in the first place.  And that had zero national-security or election-integrity implications.  But that Lindsey Graham deemed impeachable because, in his words, “Impeachment is about cleansing the office.  Impeachment is about restoring honor and integrity to the office.”  Amen, brother.  Lindsey Graham has an unwavering moral compass.

With its stock now around $10, Borealis — with 5 million shares outstanding — is valued at $50 million . . . a little less than Martha Stewart’s daughter’s spectacular triplex apartment overlooking the Hudson.  That apartment could make a family very happy but would cost a great deal each year in taxes and maintenance.  Borealis, by contrast, via its WheelTug subsidiary, could save airlines billions of dollars a year, improve air travel for tens of millions of passengers, and expand airport capacity by 10% or 20% worldwide at no cost.

The stock remains a speculation to be bought only with money you can truly afford to lose; but WheelTug has accomplished a lot since the last time BOREF traded this high.  The two main achievements: (1) Reaching a “pre-certification agreement,” as they are called, that made FAA approval — while not guaranteed — highly likely if they could get the funds to complete the FAA process.  This happened a couple of years ago.  (2) Getting the funds.  This happened last month.

So how to value the company?  There are so many ways to look at this — here’s me going through much the same giddy eexercise when the stock was $17 six years ago (which just goes to prove you must always keep a grain of salt at hand when reading this page) — and here’s me estimating a fair price for BOREF at someplace between $2.79 and $338 — but I’ve thought of one more:

There are something like 17,000 737s and A320s that could one day be retrofitted with WheelTugs.

If they can save five or ten minutes on every flight (twenty minutes once airport jet bridges are modified to accommodate “the twist“), airlines might well pay $5 million per retrofit.  Look how much more productive each $80 million aircraft and its crew would be if scheduled 200-minute trips took only 175 minutes instead.

But let’s say for the purposes of this calculation the company could make a one-time profit of just $250,000 for each plane they retrofitted.  On 17,000 planes over the next 10 years, say (because what airline would not want this capability?), that’s a little north of $4 billion.

That’s not their plan.  Their business model is to lease — not sell — WheelTug systems, and at a profit that they think (hope? dream?  hallucinate?) will ultimately dwarf that $4 billion.

But still . . . what’s a definitely-not-guaranteed $4 billion profit over 10 years worth today?  I don’t know; but more than $50 million?