KEY POINTS:
Qantas Airways says it has set up a separate company to hold its freight assets and is in talks about acquisitions for the business.
Qantas chief executive Geoff Dixon also said he believed the freight division could be successful as a standalone entity.
"We have established a separate company already to hold these assets," Dixon told the Merrill Lynch Australia Investment Conference in New York yesterday.
"There really are opportunities for us to do something different with this sort of business and I believe it can be successful as a standalone business.
"We would only do it if we thought it was beneficial for shareholders ... and before we did this, we will have to make a couple of acquisitions, and there's some discussions going on about that at the moment."
Only last week, Qantas boosted its freight arm by taking full control of Singapore-based DPEX Worldwide.
Dixon also said Qantas would give individual financial results for both its freight business and frequent flyer programme at the company's half year results in February, moving to individual reporting for all its "associated businesses" by the end of 2008.
He repeated that Qantas was considering future ownership structures for the group's so-called non-flying businesses, which include the freight, fleet and frequent flyer units.
Qantas signalled the restructuring plans earlier this year, following the failure of an A$11.1 billion ($13.3 billion) Macquarie Bank-led takeover bid for the company.
Dixon reaffirmed the company's earnings forecast for 2007/08.
- AAP
