UALUnited Airlines Holdings
Is it safe?
Elevated bankruptcy risk: a balance sheet under strain and big price swings. Everything else is secondary until this clears.
Elevated financial-distress risk Altman Z-score, a bankruptcy-risk model from five balance-sheet ratios.
Insiders were net sellers (-$27.6M, 90 days to Oct 8, 2026), selling is often routine.
Investment-grade balance sheet. A rule of thumb on leverage, not a credit rating.
Large price swings, high volatility. Worst drawdown -79% · now 19% below its 52-week high.
Unless marked, from SEC EDGAR, as of Dec 31, 2025.
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 UAL take a bad year?
United Airlines Holdings carries $9.83B of net debt at 1.25× 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
- 1.25×
Net debt / EBITDA · 1.44× a year ago · the load is coming down
- Altman Z-score
- 1.43
Altman Z-score · distress zone, below 1.8
- Interest cover
- 3.67×
Interest cover · operating profit covers the interest bill, with room to spare
Details›
- Total debtQ2 2026
- $26.5B
- Cash and short-term investments
- $16.6B
- Net debt
- $9.83B
- EBITDA, trailing twelve months
- $7.87B
- Operating profit, trailing twelve months
- $4.87B
- Debt / equity
- 1.58×
- Total debt / EBITDA
- 3.36×
- Annualised volatilitytwo years of daily moves
- 53%
- Worst drawdown on file
- −79%
- Below its 52-week high
- 19%
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