Atlas Air shares fly high on Amazon deal announcement

Atlas Air

Shares of Atlas Air Worldwide rose nearly 30 percent Thursday after the company unveiled a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon.

The stock lost some of its earlier altitude, but ended the day up nearly 27 percent.

The air logistics provider said it won a contract to provide support for Amazon’s deliveries. The deal also lets Amazon buy a stake within the company of up to 20 percent at $37.50 a share over five years.

“Our agreements with Amazon to provide and to operate 20 Boeing 767-300 converted freighters, in support of the continuing expansion of Amazon’s e-commerce business and to enhance its customer-delivery capabilities, are expected to be meaningfully accretive to our future earnings and cash flows. We expect this service to begin in the second half of this year, become accretive starting in 2017, and scale up to full service and full accretive benefits through 2018,” Atlas Air CEO William Flynn said in a statement.