The Qantas Airways Limited (ASX: QAN) share price has come under a spot of pressure on Thursday.
In morning trade, the airline operator's shares were down almost 2.5% to $4.76.
The Qantas share price has since recovered a touch but remains down 1% at $4.82 currently.
Why is the Qantas share price descending?
Investors have been selling down the Qantas share price today after it revealed that the first half of FY 2022 has been incredibly turbulent.
In fact, Qantas' CEO, Alan Joyce, labelled the period "one of the worst halves of the entire pandemic."
This was due largely to most states having their borders closed and the majority of Australians being in lockdown. Things were so bad that Qantas' capacity fell to around 30% of pre-COVID levels for several months.
This ultimately led to Qantas revealing that it expects to post an underlying earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) loss in the range of $250 million to $300 million for the first half.
And if you add in non-cash depreciation and amortisation costs, this half year loss spirals to over $1.1 billion.
The positives
Potentially preventing the Qantas share price falling further was news that the company has been able to accelerate the repair of its balance sheet. So much so, it expects to finish the first half with a materially better net debt position than it had prior to the start of Delta variant lockdowns in June. Qantas expects its net debt to be $5.65 billion at the end of December.
Furthermore, the airline's liquidity remains strong, with cash of $2.6 billion and undrawn debt facilities of $1.6 billion.
Another positive is the outlook for domestic flying. Qantas expects domestic flying to be ~75% of pre-COVID levels by the end of December, before rising to more than 100% in February 2022.
Shareholders will no doubt be hoping this proves accurate and supports a similar recovery in the Qantas share price in the coming months.
