Long Island City, NY-based low cost carrier JetBlue Airways Corporation JBLU revealed traffic data for the month of September. Important metrics such as revenue passenger miles (RPMs – a measure of air traffic), available seat miles (ASMs: measure of capacity) and load factor (% of seats filled by passengers) grew on a year-over-year basis during the month.
The carrier generated RPMs of 3.097 billion during the month, up 13.3% on a year-over-year basis. Moreover, available seat miles showed year-over-year growth of 13.1% to 3.821 billion. Load factor also showed an improvement as air traffic growth outpaced the rise in capacity. The metric grew by 20 basis points to 81.1% in Sep 2015. PRASM (a measure of unit revenue: passenger revenue per available seat mile) for the month also improved 1% from Sep 2014.
Although the measures improved on a year-over-basis, the traffic report failed to find favor with investors. Consequently, the stock shed value in after-market trading on Oct 12. We note that the Sep 2015 figures for traffic, capacity and load factor were lower than the corresponding figures recorded in Aug 2015.
JetBlue also revealed that departures in Sep 2015 were 10% higher compared with the year-ago figure. The company registered a completion factor of 99.6%, with 80% of its flights on schedule.
For the first nine months of 2015, JetBlue generated RPMs of 31.156 billion (up 9.6% from the corresponding period last year) and ASMs of 36.632 billion (up 9.2%). Further, the load factor grew 40 basis points year over year to 85.1%.
Zacks Rank
JetBlue currently carries a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). Investors interested in the airline space may also consider Ryanair Holdings RYAAY, Hawaiian Holdings HA and SkyWest Inc. SKYW. All the three stocks sport the same Zacks Rank as JetBlue.
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