On a GAAP basis, Southwest Airlines reported EPS of $0.82, a blistering 193% higher than that by the previous year's comparable quarter. The Dallas-based carrier used to have the lowest operating costs in USA airline industry, but now is outperformed in that category by Spirit and Frontier.
Despite its challenges and lower revenue performance, United was able to increase fourth quarter net income to $823 million from $28 million. The First Call stated that the company is expected to post earnings of -0.01 per share in next quarter. This strong cost performance was largely the result of improved efficiency as part of the company's Project Quality and up gauging initiatives and better completion as a result of improved operational performance.
Many research analysts have given their price and earnings estimates on the stock.
Revenue fell 3 percent to $9.04 billion, slightly below the $9.08 billion average forecast from the FactSet analysts. Vetr lowered shares of United Continental Holdings from a "buy" rating to a "hold" rating and set a $62.20 price target for the company.in a research note on Wednesday, October 28th. The stock has dropped almost 4 percent in the last 12 months. Southwest's fuel cost went down 31.6 percent, to $789 million from $1.17 billion in the year-ago quarter.
The average fee for a 30-year mortgage was unchanged from last week at 0.6 point.
Falling oil prices are great news for the airline industry. While the airline foresees the weakness in unit revenue to persist in the first quarter of 2016, it expects lower fuel costs to bolster its margins. The low-priced carrier reported quarterly adjusted EPS of $0.90 on revenues of $4.98 billion. The company had revenue of $10306.00 million for the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $10309.76 million. The business earned $5 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $5 billion. Southwest reported paying an average $2.03 a gallon system wide, a decline of 22.5 percent from the fourth quarter of 2014. The company had 704 Boeing 737 jets in its fleet at the end of the year and announced a revised delivery date of new and previously owned planes to grow faster. The decline was caused by lower average fares.
For all of 2015, Southwest earned a record $2.18 billion, up 92 percent, on revenue of $19.8 billion.
Due to the over 50% plunge in crude oil prices in 2015, United's fuel expense fell approximately 35% resulting in cost savings of nearly $4 billion for the full year.
"These airport workers are subcontractors employed by Prime Flight; they clean planes and handle bags and work the terminals and get paid $10.10 per hour without benefits, and somehow United Airlines still maintains that it can't be involved in frivolous matters like their contractor's employees at Newark Airport, even as they teeter on the razor's edge of the sustenance level".
Southwest Airlines (NYSE:LUV) opened at 39.50 on Friday.
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