Fight Over Spirit Airlines Continues, JetBlue and Frontier Increase Offers

Spirit Airlines may be home to a different airline company soon. JetBlue and Frontier are not backing down as the bidding war continues. Days after Frontier upped its bidding price for the budget airline, and JetBlue increased its offer.

Originally, JetBlue offered $3.6 billion in cash, then made a tender offer valued at $3.2 billion asking Spirit to reject Frontier’s offer.

Monday JetBlue said that it will now provide a $350 million reverse break-up payable to Spirit if a deal between the two isn’t completed for antitrust reasons, per the Associated Press. It’s $150 million more than JetBlue previously offered to pay.

JetBlue adds, “it would prepay $1.50 per share in cash, about $164 million, of the reverse break-up fee, in the form of a cash dividend to Spirit stockholders promptly following the Spirit stockholder vote approving the combination between Spirit and JetBlue.”

This means that Spirit stockholders would ultimately hold a $30 share price in cash at the end of the transaction and a prepayment of $1.50 per share for the reverse break-up fee.

Spirit has not commented on how this will impact consumers who fly Spirit regularly.