By Shares of American Airlines Group Inc. (AAL) experienced a notable surge of 3.8% in premarket trading on Thursday. This increase comes after the air carrier exceeded expectations for its fourth-quarter earnings and provided an optimistic profit outlook for 2024.
Despite a decline in net income to $19 million, or 3 cents per share, compared to $803 million, or $1.14 per share, in the year-ago period, adjusted earnings per share of 29 cents surpassed the FactSet consensus of 11 cents. Revenue for the quarter dropped by 1% to $13.06 billion but still managed to surpass the FactSet consensus of $13.01 billion. Encouragingly, American Airlines saw a 7.8% growth in revenue for the entirety of 2023, reaching an all-time high of $52.79 billion.
Although the load factor slipped slightly from 83.9% to 83.6%, it exceeded expectations of 82.9%. The capacity growth of 5.8%, outpacing traffic growth of 5.4%, played a significant role in this outcome.
Looking ahead, American Airlines anticipates an adjusted per-share loss ranging from 15 cents to 35 cents for the first quarter, which aligns with the FactSet loss consensus of 22 cents. Moreover, the company’s projected adjusted EPS for 2024 lies between $2.25 and $3.25, surpassing the FactSet consensus of $2.14.
Over the past three months, American Airlines stock has enjoyed a remarkable increase of 26.2%, outperforming both the U.S. Global Jets ETF (JETS), which saw a climb of 25.4%, and the S&P 500 (SPX), which experienced an advance of 16.3% during the same period.
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