The stash of cash is being added to. If those additions were coming from new stock sales, the share price would be down to around $10/ share due to the dilutive effect of same being dumped on the market. Excess to operations? That's called gross profits. In the 'bookkeeping' process, we know this is the value expenses are subtracted from to arrive at net income (basic high school accounting), and some of that 'net' finds its way to the stash. The word bookkeeping is in points because of its creative nature on occasion, especially when a company (in this case, AMR) wants to appear unprofitable for negotiation purposes. Bottom line - the stash has grown by about $1 billion per year for a while, and the shares outstanding number hasn't grown enough to support your statement re: sales of stock.
Despite your incorrect sentence (bolded), AMR has in fact sold 41 million shares to the public in three separate offerings in 2005, 2006 and 2007, netting $1.120 billion in the process. In 2003, AMR sold $300 million of convertible debt and in 2004, an additional $324 million of convertible debt. Not all the increase came from sales of new stock, however.
On top of that, asset sales have added significant cash: In 2003, sales of Worldspan, Hotwire and part of AMR's Orbitz stake brought in $219 million, $84 million and $65 million, respectively. The 2004 sale of the rest of Orbitz netted the company another $223 million.
Other new debt issued in 2003 and 2004 (primarily equipment trust certs and 2d mortgage spare parts financings) brought in $533 million more.
That's a total of $2.868 billion of new cash that didn't represent net profits during that time.
Cash has grown at $2.0 billion a year? Hardly. At 3/31/03, unrestricted cash and short-term investments was about $1.3 billion. At 6/30/07, it stood at about $5.9 billion. Of the $4.6 billion increase since then, only $1.73 billion resulted from positive cash flow, enough to pay for just one year of concession restoration (after accounting for the $2.868 billion listed above).
AA has had positive cash flow since the concessions, primarily the non-cash expenses, like amortization and depreciation. Recently, AA has begun showing net profits even after subtracting those items. But hardly big enough to restore your concessions.
The stock payouts would be a rather interesting angle, but it's doubtful, as I've said before, that the dog will share its food dish. According to the S-3 on the SEC website AMR filed last August, notice was given to create an indeterminate amount of stock which is what was given (gratis, free, whatever) to execs (and others whom AMR felt may withdraw support for their scheme) who immediately sold same and diluted the stock price by $6/share. That $6/share represents the stockholder value taken by the executives from the shareholders with the board's blessings. If we were to "share" in this windfall, there would be, without a doubt, a different metric applied, insuring the workers would get the short end of the stick, as usual. Perhaps if the same metric were applied as with the execs and the same percentage of bonus to pay were awarded, I might be interested; otherwise, F.U.R.P.
As I posted earlier, the UA pilots and mechanics demanded 55% of the company in exchange for their 1994 concessions. Consenting to the ESOP was their huge mistake, not the acquisition of a big equity stake. AA's employee unions should have demanded at least that big a piece of the pie in 2003 in exchange for their massive give-backs of about $8.1 billion over the five year term. Management won't agree? Then go ahead and shut the place down. Everyone has a better, higher paying gig just waiting for them, right?
You guys should settle for no less than half of the company in 2008. Good luck getting as much as you can.
