LUVSouthwest Airlines
Is it safe?
Solid, nothing alarming. Balance sheet to watch.
Mixed, watch the balance sheet Altman Z-score, a bankruptcy-risk model from five balance-sheet ratios.
Investment-grade balance sheet. A rule of thumb on leverage, not a credit rating.
Moderate price swings, typical volatility. Worst drawdown -65% · now 23% below its 52-week high.
Against the whole market›
Percentile against every name Ryufin tracks. Higher is better; the tick marks the middle of the market. Context, not one of the checks above.
Where this answer is blind. Altman sits structurally low for utilities and pipelines; Beneish runs high for fast growers, since sales growth alone lifts it; banks and REITs are excluded.
Can LUV take a bad year?
Southwest Airlines carries $2.15B of net debt at 0.83× EBITDA: a load its earnings can carry.
Net debt · as at Q2 2026 · under two and a half years of EBITDA, comfortable
- Net debt / EBITDA
- 0.83×
Net debt / EBITDA · 0.14× a year ago · the load is going up
- Altman Z-score
- 2.31
Altman Z-score · grey zone, between 1.8 and 3
- Cash runway
- 5+ years
Cash runway · burning $114M a quarter at the current rate
Details›
- Total debtQ2 2026
- $5.95B
- Cash and short-term investments
- $3.79B
- Net debt
- $2.15B
- EBITDA, trailing twelve months
- $2.61B
- Operating profit, trailing twelve months
- $1.04B
- Debt / equity
- 0.84×
- Total debt / EBITDA
- 2.28×
- Annualised volatilitytwo years of daily moves
- 42%
- Worst drawdown on file
- −65%
- Below its 52-week high
- 23%
Balance sheet from SEC filings; drawdown and volatility from end-of-day closes; Altman Z from the filed statements.
Airlines
The closest names by size in the same industry