[windywendy]

Around the world, the airline industry does not do very well. However NAHCO provides services to this industry and could potentially do well. I think that for a company like NAHCO, the major catalyst for growth (apart from additional funds) will be an increase in the volume of travel going through the airports. I just read today that 3 airlines have been approved for direct flights to the US from Nigeria. Also, there are other airlines that are getting on the international route to and from Nigeria. I'm not sure what domestic travel is like and what the trends in volumes are, but I can imagine that with the new government safety requirements for local airline operators, people might be more confident to travel by air and this will increase domestic airline traffic. Also, NAHCO has only one competitor, skypower, which is basically inefficient and a much smaller player. So given these (plus the fact that the company is planning to expand into other areas of operations that will potentially diversify its revenue streams), I believe NAHCO is well placed to do well as a company over the medium to long term.

Now the next question is: is the stock a good investment? This will depend on the price at which the stock will be offered. Also, if the current shareholding structure is maintained (i.e. if only a small percentage of the post-offer shares are held by individual investors), this will reduce the available float on the exchange and could help the price. So I guess we should get the prospectus first and see what price the offer will be made at and what other plans management has to make the company stay competitive. We might also want to do some sniffing around to see what the current big shareholders like BA are going to do regarding the offer -- if they're divesting for instance, that might be a sign that all is not well. However they've already said that there'll be preferential allotment of the offer to some core investors, so that might be a sign that the current core investors are going to be holding on to their % of the company's shareholding, which might just be another good thing.