Southwest Airlines Co (NYSE: LUV) on Thursday said its revenue in the fiscal first quarter more than doubled on a year-over-year basis. Shares opened 5.0% up despite a wider-than-expected quarterly loss.
Southwest Airlines Q1 financial highlights
- Lost $278 million versus the year-ago figure of $116 million in net income.
- Per-share loss of 47 cents was much worse than 19 cents of EPS last year.
- Adjusted for one-time items, per-share loss stood at 32 cents in fiscal Q1.
- Revenue shot up 128.8% to $4.69 billion, as per the earnings press release.
- FactSet consensus was 30 cents of per-share loss (adj) on $4.67 billion revenue.
Southwest took a $380 million hit in January and February due to soft bookings and cancellations but March saw a sharp rebound.
Other notable figures and CEO Jordan’s remarks
Other notable figures in the earnings report include a 48.6% increase in capacity, 82% in traffic, while load factor climbed from 64.3% to 77%. Fuel costs averaged at $2.30 a gallon in Q1 and are expected to be much higher ($3.05 to $3.15) in the current fiscal quarter.
For 2022 as a whole, Southwest expects fuel costs to be in the range of $2.75 to $2.85 a gallon. In the earnings press release, CEO Bob Jordan said:
Based on current plans and expected continued strong bookings, we continue to expect to be solidly profitable for the remaining three quarters, and full year 2022. We expect solid Q2 2022 profits and operating margins, excluding special items.
The stock is now up 7.0% for the year.
The post Southwest Airlines swings to Q1 loss: CEO sees solid profit in Q2 appeared first on Invezz.
Source: https://invezz.com/news/2022/04/28/southwest-airlines-swings-to-q1-loss-ceo-sees-solid-profit-in-q2/