Spirit Airlines ( NYSE: SAVE ) shares rose sharply after posting stronger than expected profits for the fourth quarter.
For the fourth quarter 2022, the Florida-based airline notched $0.12 in adjusted earnings per share on $1.39B in revenue. The latter met analyst expectations , but the former exceeded estimates by 400%.
“Leisure demand has remained strong and our team is doing a great job maximizing revenue production," CEO Ted Christie commented. "In the fourth quarter 2022, despite a significant number of weather-related flight cancellations during the peak holiday period, our team delivered better-than-expected unit revenue performance. In fact, when adjusting for capacity increases, our unit revenue performance in the fourth quarter was amongst the best in the industry, when compared to 2019.”
Moving forward, the carrier expects total revenue per available seat mile for Q1 2023 to be up 23% to 24.5% as compared to Q1 2022. Available seat miles are expected to increase 13.2% for the quarter. For the full-year available seat miles are expected to increase 19% to 22%.
“Our team did a great job navigating the various challenges in 2022 and closed the year with better-than-expected results. Despite some unexpected setbacks with Geared Turbo Fan engine availability issues, a continued stressed industry infrastructure, and other issues, we have been steadily building back to full fleet utilization and are on track to be close to full fleet utilization by the end of 2023,” CFO Scott Haralson said. “These issues, together with Airbus aircraft delivery delays, have led us to be more conservative with our capacity planning assumptions for 2023.”
Shares of the Miami-based airline rose nearly 10% shortly after the print before moderating gains to about a 3.72% gain in after hours trading.
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Spirit Airlines stock gains on stronger than expected profits