A group of budget airlines is reportedly seeking financial assistance from the federal government that could convert to an equity stake in the air carriers.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that the group of budget airlines, including Frontier and Avelo, is seeking $2.5 billion in federal assistance through stock warrants that could convert into equity stakes in the airlines, according to people familiar with the matter.

Some of the Journal’s sources told the outlet that the group’s $2.5 billion figure was derived from an estimate of how much they expect to spend on jet fuel this year compared with earlier forecasts, with the estimate assuming jet fuel prices will remain above an average of $4 a gallon for the rest of the year.

Conversations about a possible relief package for budget airlines are reportedly expected to continue in the coming days, according to the Journal’s report. The news follows a reported meeting between the leaders of several budget carriers with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Federal Aviation Administration chief Bryan Bedford last week.

“As the smallest and newest airline in the country, Avelo competes against significantly larger airlines who have unprecedented market dominance,” Avelo Airlines said in a statement to FOX Business. “Our focus on unserved and underserved airports gives millions of U.S. consumers low fare nonstop air service options they otherwise would not have. We have no specific comment on the report, but we emphatically agree that a healthy airline industry with strong competition is important to the U.S. economy, especially during this period of high fuel prices.”

FOX Business reached out to Frontier Airlines for comment.

WHAT A GOVERNMENT STAKE IN SPIRIT AIRLINES COULD MEAN FOR PASSENGERS AND THE INDUSTRY

Rising jet fuel prices amid the war in Iran have strained the outlooks for air carriers, who face higher costs than anticipated. 

Some air carriers, including larger rivals like United and American, have responded by raising fares and checked baggage fees on consumers.

TRUMP SIGNALS INTEREST IN BUYING SPIRIT AIRLINES WITH TAXPAYER BACKING, AIMS TO RESELL FOR PROFIT

Last week, leading budget carriers requested that Congress pass a bill to suspend the 7.5% federal excise tax on airline tickets and the $5.30 per segment tax, which the Association of Value Airlines estimated would offset about one-third of the increased fuel costs. 

The group represents Spirit Airlines, Frontier Airlines, Allegiant Air, Sun Country and Avelo.

The budget airlines’ pursuit of federal aid comes as the Trump administration is weighing a separate proposal to provide relief for Spirit Airlines in the form of a $500 million loan that would give the federal government the ability to convert warrants into equity stakes in the airlines.

CHEVRON CEO WARNS AVIATION STRAIN COULD WORSEN AS JET FUEL CRUNCH DEEPENS

The deal would see the federal government receive warrants equal to about 90% of Spirit’s equity in exchange for the funding.

Rising jet fuel costs have complicated Spirit’s plan to exit bankruptcy this summer, after the budget carrier entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings for the second time last year.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Treasury Department received warrants in major airlines after a roughly $54 billion support package to prevent mass layoffs during the pandemic. 

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The federal government ultimately opted against exercising the warrants it acquired and instead sold them in actions that yielded over $550 million.

Reuters contributed to this report.

More than 300 pubs, bars and restaurants have served their last pint and plated their last cover since the start of the year, as Britain’s licensed trade groans under the combined weight of higher wage bills, stubborn energy costs and customers who are quietly drinking and dining at home.

Fresh analysis from CGA by NIQ, the market research group, shows the number of licensed premises across the UK slipped to 98,609 by the end of March, a net loss of 305 venues since December, or rather more than three closures every single day. Coming on top of the 382 sites lost between September and December, the figures mean the country has shed 0.7 per cent of its licensed estate in just six months.

It is a slow-motion contraction that is now accelerating. Casual dining has been hit hardest, with the number of restaurants in that bracket falling by 0.9 per cent in the first quarter alone. Bars, nightclubs, traditional pubs and social clubs have also gone to the wall as households defer the small discretionary treats, a Friday curry, a midweek pint, a birthday dinner, that have long propped up neighbourhood operators.

Behind the headline numbers sits a familiar but increasingly toxic mix of cost pressures. April’s rise in employers’ national insurance contributions, the upward ratchet on business rates and persistently elevated food prices have eaten into already wafer-thin margins. Energy bills, which many operators had hoped would ease this year, have instead been pushed higher by the war in the Gulf, with wholesale gas and fuel prices feeding through to suppliers and threatening another round of menu price rises that publicans are reluctant to pass on to bruised customers.

Karl Chessell, director of hospitality operators and food at NIQ, said confidence among both businesses and consumers remained stubbornly low and warned that “geopolitical crises are likely to cause more damage in the months ahead”. While many operators had “shown remarkable resilience”, he said, “thousands are now nearing breaking point”.

“Soaring costs have taken a heavy toll on hospitality in the first quarter,” Chessell added. “Without targeted support, more closures can be expected over the rest of 2026.”

The trade is now lobbying ministers in earnest for a sector-specific package, a permanent reduction in business rates for hospitality, a lower rate of VAT on food and drink in line with much of continental Europe, and a softening of the national insurance changes for smaller employers. Operators argue that the alternative is the slow hollowing-out of the British high street, with independents and chains alike disappearing from market towns and city centres at a rate not seen since the depths of the pandemic.

For now, the maths is brutally simple. Wages, energy and tax are all rising; footfall and spend per head are not. Until that equation shifts, through policy, peace or a meaningful rebound in consumer confidence, the country’s pubs, bars and restaurants will keep going dark, three a day, one local at a time.

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Elixirr International plc (ELXXF) Q4 2025 Earnings Call April 21, 2026 8:00 AM EDT

Company Participants

Stephen Newton – Founder, CEO & Director
Nicholas Willott – CFO, Partner, Finance Director, Company Secretary & Director
Emiko Smith – Partner
Graham Busby – Co-Founder, Partner, Deputy CEO & Director

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Presentation

Operator

Good afternoon and welcome to the Elixirr International plc Investor Presentation. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, I’d like to submit the following poll.

I’d now like to hand you over to Stephen Newton, CEO. Good afternoon.

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Stephen Newton
Founder, CEO & Director

For those of you who have not met me, I’m Steve Newton, Founder and CEO, co-founded it with Graham. And Nick is our CFO; and Em is our Investor Relations lead.

So you’ll hear from all 4 of us in this presentation. But let’s start off with where we are as a business and how we feel about it. I was reflecting over the weekend on the 17 years that we’ve been building this company. And I actually can’t believe we — I almost feel like we’ve been founded for this moment. If I think back to the dot-com time, there was this whole story about the high street was dead and there were so many technology was going to change the way business had operated and there’ll be so many different people being out of business. Yes, retail stuff suffered but it’s had to adjust itself and use different channels and different levers. And people are saying this about AI to consultancies. And to be honest, it creates a massive opportunity for us. Just like the digital revolution is still ongoing. We’re still helping clients to use the Internet technologies to be able to access their client bases and increase their revenue.

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And AI is going to be that 30-year

Sir Keir Starmer is facing fresh calls to spearhead a new cabinet committee charged with shielding British businesses from the mounting cost of global economic shocks, after one of the country’s most influential lobby groups warned that the UK remains dangerously exposed to disruption.

In a report published on Sunday night, the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) said a decade marked by Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had laid bare the absence of meaningful contingency planning to insulate the UK economy when global supply chains seize up.

The intervention lands at a pointed moment. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz for two months in the wake of the Middle East war is expected to push British inflation higher in the coming quarter and is already squeezing supplies of components used across the food and heavy industry sectors.

Shevaun Haviland, director-general of the BCC, said small and mid-sized firms had been “permanently bruised” by the procession of global shocks and could no longer be left to absorb the consequences alone.

“The UK’s inadequate economic security has become a drag on growth, competitiveness and national strength; yet it is still not given the focus and urgency it demands. The wars in Ukraine and Iran have demonstrated how supply chains can be disrupted overnight. We now live in a world where trade interests may be weaponised and where failing to secure key raw materials means failing to grow.”

At the heart of the BCC’s recommendations is the creation of an economic security cabinet committee, chaired by the prime minister of the day, that would coordinate Whitehall’s response to trade disputes, retaliatory tariffs and attempts to lock British exporters out of foreign markets.

The proposal arrives in the wake of the US Supreme Court’s decision in February to strike down President Donald Trump’s so-called “liberation day” tariffs,  a ruling that has done little to soften the chilling effect his protectionist agenda has had on free-trading economies, many of which have been forced to design emergency retaliatory measures of their own.

The lobby group is also urging ministers to follow Brussels’s lead and forge a UK version of the EU’s “anti-coercion instrument”, introduced in 2023 and dubbed by some officials a “trade bazooka”. The mechanism would empower the government to impose import charges, and other punitive trade restrictions, on companies based in jurisdictions judged to be in breach of international trade commitments.

The numbers underline the case. The BCC estimates that more than 75 per cent of British manufactured goods sold overseas begin life with imported components, while imports and exports together account for around 60 per cent of UK gross domestic product. Few advanced economies, the report argues, are quite so reliant on the smooth running of someone else’s logistics.

Diversifying that supply chain, so that Britain is less dependent on a narrow band of suppliers for the raw materials underpinning the industries of the future, must become a strategic priority, the BCC says. Demand for lithium, copper and aluminium, the building blocks of electric vehicles, batteries and renewable infrastructure, is forecast to surge over the next decade as consumers and businesses move to greener products.

China’s near monopoly over the refining and processing of many of those critical minerals is, in the BCC’s view, the clearest illustration of why ministers should accelerate domestic production where possible and steer supply chains towards “friendlier” trading partners.

For Britain’s small and medium-sized exporters — many still nursing the scars of Brexit-related red tape and pandemic-era cost spikes, the message from Westminster’s business community is becoming impossible to ignore: in an era of weaponised trade, economic security is no longer the preserve of the Foreign Office. It is, increasingly, a board-level concern.

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The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq eked out modest gains on Monday in muted trading, as investors took a breath at the top of an eventful week, with earnings, economic data, the U.S. Federal Reserve‘s rate decision and the ebb and flow of Middle East tensions all crowding the docket.

All three major U.S. stock indexes wavered throughout the session, showing little conviction in ‌either direction after last ⁠week’s rally ⁠sent the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq to a series of record closing highs.

The session began with the S&P 500 up over 100% since the bull market began in October 2022.

“The market is just trying to deal with the rally that’s been going on and digest the latest all-time highs that we’ve made on the indices,” said Robert Pavlik, senior portfolio manager at Dakota Wealth in Fairfield, Connecticut. “And it’s trying to figure out whether or not those all-time highs are justified.”

First-quarter earnings season has hit full stride, with a host of high-profile firms slated to report this week, including five of the Magnificent Seven technology ⁠megacaps, Amazon , ‌Alphabet, Meta Platforms, Apple and Microsoft. Investors will assess the extent to which these companies are beginning to reap benefits of massive expenditures on artificial intelligence.

As of Friday, 139 companies in the S&P 500 have posted first-quarter ⁠results. Of those, 81% have beaten estimates. Analysts now see aggregate S&P 500 earnings growth of 16.1% year-on-year, up from 14.4% on April 1, according to LSEG I/B/E/S.
The companies due to report this week account for roughly 44% of the S&P 500’s market capitalization, according to Raymond James. “Guidance has been pretty good. We’re seeing earnings growth of 15%, and I would classify that as a very good environment, except the road has gotten a lot more bumpy,” Pavlik added, referring to geopolitical tensions in the Middle East.

Attempts to revive peace talks between the U.S. and Iran continue following President Donald Trump‘s decision to call off negotiators’ trip to Islamabad for another round ‌of face-to-face talks. Iran continues to restrict shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, with Iranian officials demanding that Washington lift its blockade as a precondition to further negotiation.

On Tuesday, the Federal Reserve is scheduled to convene for its two-day policy meeting, widely expected to ⁠culminate in the decision to leave interest rates unchanged. The accompanying statement and Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s press conference will be scrutinized for clues regarding the central bank’s assessment of U.S. economic health and the inflationary impact of spiking energy prices resulting from the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

According to preliminary data, the S&P 500 gained 8.93 points, or 0.12%, to end at 7,174.01 points, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 49.78 points, or 0.20%, to 24,886.38. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 57.82 points, or 0.12%, to 49,172.89.

Verizon advanced following the telecom company’s annual forecast hike due to stronger-than-expected subscriber adds.

Domino’s Pizza slid after the pizza chain missed first-quarter sales estimates.

Nvidia extended the prior session’s 4.3% surge. The company has reclaimed a market valuation of more than $5 trillion.

The British Business Bank has committed $20m to Ineffable Intelligence, the London-headquartered artificial intelligence venture, as part of a landmark $1.1bn seed round that ranks as the largest in European history.

In a move that signals a sharpening of the Government’s industrial strategy around frontier technology, the state-owned development bank has co-invested alongside the Sovereign AI Fund, the Treasury-backed vehicle established to keep strategically significant AI businesses anchored on these shores. The Sovereign AI Fund has put in further capital on top of the Bank’s contribution, although the precise figure has not been disclosed.

The British cheques sit within a syndicate that reads like a who’s who of Silicon Valley capital. Sequoia, Lightspeed, NVIDIA, Index Ventures, Google, EQT, Evantic, Flying Fish, DST Global and BOND have all joined the round, lending weight to the argument that Britain remains capable of attracting deep-pocketed foreign investors to its homegrown technology champions despite persistent concerns about the country’s appetite for risk.

Ineffable Intelligence is the brainchild of David Silver, the University College London professor widely regarded as one of the most influential reinforcement learning researchers of his generation. Silver previously ran the reinforcement learning team at Google DeepMind and is credited with pivotal work on AlphaGo, AlphaZero, AlphaFold and AlphaProof, the systems that successively rewrote what machines were thought capable of in domains ranging from board games to protein folding and mathematical reasoning.

His new venture has set itself a deliberately audacious mission: to build what Silver calls a “superlearner”, a system capable of discovering knowledge from its own experience rather than relying on the data humans feed it. If realised, the technology would represent a step change beyond today’s large language models, which remain heavily dependent on training material drawn from the internet.

For the British Business Bank, the investment marks the latest in a steady cadence of AI commitments. The lender has now made nine AI deals over the past twelve months, with recent backing for autonomous driving outfit Wayve and conversational AI specialist PolyAI. The Bank has also been a quietly significant force behind the commercialisation of British academic research, supporting almost a quarter of all university spinout deals struck between 2022 and 2024.

Charlotte Lawrence, managing director of direct equity at the British Business Bank, described Silver as “a generational talent who has consistently been on the cutting edge of AI development“. She added: “Ineffable Intelligence has the potential to produce a paradigm shift in our scientific and technology landscape, and we are incredibly excited to be supporting him and his team in this endeavour.”

George Mills, the Bank’s investment director, said the company was tackling “one of the most significant opportunities within AI”, citing potential applications spanning advanced problem solving and new product development. “The UK produces world-class AI talent, and we are pleased to back strategically important businesses to scale and stay in the UK,” he said, in remarks that will be read as a pointed reminder of the Government’s determination to stem the flow of British intellectual property to American owners.

Josephine Kant, head of ventures at Sovereign AI, was equally bullish. “Very few founders in the world could credibly set out to build a superlearner, a system that discovers new knowledge from its own experience rather than ours. David is one of them,” she said. “From AlphaGo to AlphaZero to AlphaProof, he has spent nearly two decades turning reinforcement learning from a research idea into the results the rest of the field builds on. Ineffable is being built in the UK, and that matters.”

The deal arrives at a delicate moment for British technology policy. Ministers have repeatedly stressed their ambition to position the country as a global hub for safe, sovereign AI development, but they have faced criticism for the relative scarcity of late-stage growth capital available to scaling deep-tech businesses. A seed round of this magnitude, anchored by domestic public capital and topped up by the world’s most prolific venture investors, will be cited by Whitehall as evidence that the strategy is beginning to bear fruit.

For SME founders watching from the sidelines, the headline figures may feel a world away from their own funding realities. Yet the structural shift is significant: the British Business Bank’s growing willingness to write meaningful equity cheques into frontier technology businesses, in concert with private capital, suggests a more interventionist posture that could in time filter down to a broader cohort of high-growth British companies.

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