Few businesses have suffered more during the pandemic than Rolls-Royce. The company’s shares have been understandably wobbly since results for 2020 came out in March and they face a testing six weeks until the aerospace company publishes its numbers for the half-year to June 30.
Rolls declared a £4 billion loss for 2020 compared with a £306 million profit in 2019, after underlying revenue fell from £15.5 billion to £11.7 billion. The elephant trap was its reasonable-sounding policy of charging airlines for the hours its engines fly. Last year they hardly left the ground, forcing Rolls into a £7 billion emergency recapitalisation from loans and fresh equity.
It would be wrong to blame all the company’s ills on Covid. The shares had been sliding for
