Hawaiian Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:HA), parent of Hawaiian Airlines, is popping by more than 8% on Wednesday thanks to an excellent May traffic report and an upward revision to its Q2 results. The move was good enough, in fact, to bring HA stock back into the black for 2017.
Hawaiian Airlines reported a 5.1% jump in passengers to 966,179 for May, in a release out late Tuesday. Among other strong stats:
- 8% growth in revenue passenger miles to 1.37 million
- 5% growth in capacity to 1.58 billion
- 2.4 percentage points of improvement in load factor, to 86.7 percent
Those figures, along with new estimates for its fiscal second quarter, were enough to give HA stock a boost at the open.
For Q2, Hawaiian Holdings now expects Q2 operating revenue per average seat mile to improve by 10.5%, up from 8.5%. Meanwhile, it believes economic fuel cost per gallon will come in a range of $1.60 to $1.70.
HA shares have been recovering since April, when the company reported growing earnings and improvements in adjusted pretax margin.
“Strong demand coupled with benign industry capacity growth in our geographies have given us a robust operating environment sufficient to more than offset the impact of the rising price of fuel,” Hawaiian Airlines president and CEO Mark Dunkerley said at the time.
The company also managed to get a 63-month agreement signed with its pilots, and was named “Airline of the Year” for 2016 by Incheon International Airport in South Korea.
The most recent set of monthly reports wasn’t all good for the sector. United Continental Holdings Inc (NYSE:UAL) saw consolidated passenger load factor drop 0.9 points, for instance. Delta Air Lines, Inc. (NYSE:DAL), on the flip side, reported a 3.5% improvement in PRASM as well as a 1.7% uptick in total revenue passenger miles.
As of this writing, Robert Martin did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.
