Brazil airline Gol expects to halve cash burn for remainder of 2020

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazil’s Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes said on Thursday it expects to burn through 3 million reais ($565,195.27) a day for the rest of 2020, half of its previously announced expected cash consumption.

Gol faced a cash crunch at the end of August as the deadline neared to repay a $300 million loan that credit rating analysts said had a high risk of default.

Gol said Thursday it had managed “a full pay-down” of the loan, which was secured by Delta Air Lines .

Last week, Reuters reported that Delta had actually helped Gol refinance the loan.

In the month of August, excluding the repayment of its debt, Gol burned through 6 million reais per day, it said.

As of the end of the month, it said it had a “total liquidity” of 2.1 billion reais, although it did not disclose how much of that was in readily available cash.

Under its own metric, liquidity has fallen 46% since June, and 17% since July.

(Reporting by Marcelo Rochabrun; Editing by Nick Zieminski)