[quote=obiero]Hmm http://www.businessdaily...881328-5mrti/index.html[/quote]

relevance?

Thought so too

Ukweli.. KQ ni mama yao

A Hint to Buffett's Airline Bet: Credit Cards (BRK-A, BRK-B)
By Michael Foster | Updated April 5, 2017 — 9:09 AM EDT
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The real reason Warren Buffett bought airline stocks may be all about miles.

Back in the early 1990s, the Oracle of Omaha famously called out airlines as a terrible investment because of their low profit margins.

Writing to Berkshire Hathaway ( BRK-A , BRK-B ) shareholders, he said, "Investors have regularly poured money is nto the domestic airline business to finance profitless (or worse) growth," wryly adding that these investors would've been better off "if Orville had failed to get off the ground at Kitty Hawk."

Investors were understandably surprised and confused when Buffett announced he was buying airlines late last year. In total, Berkshire bought over $1 billion in domestic airline stocks after mocking those same assets two decades ago. (See also: After Shunning Industry, Buffett Buys Airlines
.)

Why the change of heart? Buffett never explained the purchase publicly, but a new report from Bloomberg might explain the purchases.

According to Bloomberg, airlines make more money selling airline miles than they make selling seats. The boon comes from credit card partnerships, which is a business that didn't exist in 1992 when Buffett criticized the industry. Since then, airline-branded credit cards have exploded in popularity and have become common around the world, thanks to partnerships with American Express (AXP), Citigroup (C), Bank of America (BAC), Barclays ( BCS) and J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM).

It's also not surprising that Buffett is a major shareholder in many credit card companies. Berkshire owns $11.2 billion in AXP shares, $943 million in Visa (V) and $553 million in Mastercard. If the airlines are profiting in the growing popularity of using credit cards to buy everything, Buffett's airline trade is just an extension of his massive bet on the credit card industry.
Bloomberg estimates carriers earn anywhere from 1.5 cents to 2.5 cents per mile awarded on a credit card, and "big banks amass those miles by the billions." That translates into hundreds of millions of dollars in easy revenue for airline carriers.

On top of the incremental sales, those miles also expose the airlines to a lucrative customer base. According to Bloomberg, airline-branded cards tend to be preferred by higher earning customers who also have higher credit scores, lower default rates and spend more on their credit cards. That, in turn, makes them a lucrative group for the banks, the credit card firms and the airliners.