KUALA LUMPUR (Sept 25): AirAsia Bhd group chief executive officer (CEO) Tan Sri Tony Fernandes congratulated AirAsia X Bhd (AAX) new CEO Benyamin Ismail in a post on social media site Twitter today, and added that the low budget long haul carrier is going to be very profitable.

“Congrats to @Benyaminismail new AirAsia X  CEO. Great job. Impressed with the speed of the turnaround.. Going to be very profitable,” read Fernandes’s Twitter posting.

Benyamin, who was formerly AirAsia’s head of investor relations, was confirmed as AAX CEO effective Sept 1, after holding the post of its acting CEO since Jan 30, 2015, following the departure of Azran-Osman Rani.

In another Twitter posting today, Fernandes posted a picture of himself with a group of people with the caption “seeing many Malaysia airlines staff in AirAsia last few days. Glad we could hire some. Great people”.

In a news report last year, Fernandes had said he would accept job applications from Malaysian Airline System Bhd's employees, who may lose their jobs as part of the restructuring exercise undertaken by Khazanah Nasional Bhd, adding that almost 50% of AirAsia staff were former employees of the national carrier.

According to news portals, Malaysia Airlines had sent out 20,000 employee termination letters in June this year, of which 6,000 of its staff had their contracts terminated, while 14,000 were offered employment with the new Malaysia Airlines Bhd.

AAX' shares fell 1 sen or 4.55% to 21 sen at noon market close today, with 6.52 million shares traded, for a market capitalisation of RM912.6 million.

At the same time, AirAsia's shares fell 4 sen or 2.94% to RM1.32, with 29.54 million shares traded, for a market capitalisation of RM3.75 billion. It was also the top five most actively-traded counters on Bursa Malaysia this morning.

(Note: The Edge Research's fundamental score reflects a company’s profitability and balance sheet strength, calculated based on historical numbers. The valuation score determines if a stock is attractively valued or not, also based on historical numbers. A score of 3 suggests strong fundamentals and attractive valuations.)