First Quarter - Southwest's 4q Profit Slips On Higher Costs - News

DALLAS (AP) Southwest Airlines Co. states that fourth-quarter revenue dropped by just about 50 percent about higher investing regarding fuel, toil and maintenance.

The airline's revenue rose slightly, however, because ordinary service climbed virtually $8 greater than per annum ago.

Southwest additionally said that bookings for your first 90 days of 2013 look strong. It reported that primarily based on bookings plus admission price ranges so far, a key earnings measure should increase by way of a couple of p'cent that will 3 per cent within January weighed against the same month very last year.

Southwest, that nation's fourth-biggest airline, said Thursday that net profits appeared to be $78 million, as well as 11 cents each share. That's lower coming from $152 million, and also thirty cents each share, per annum earlier.

Excluding items for instance gasoline contracts, the online salary might have been recently hunting for cents per share, winning over the actual 7-cents-per-share prediction involving analysts surveyed by simply FactSet.

Revenue ticked up 1.6 percent in order to $4.17 billion nonetheless chop down short regarding this $4.20 million in which analysts expected.

Expenses rose faster, however, by 3.1 percent. That includes a 4.5 p'cent maximize with crews charges and a thirteen percent soar within preservation as the airline continued for you to overhaul this cabin rentals within a lot of their planes.

Spending on fuel, the airline's biggest expense, increased by a modest 0.7 percent. Southwest determined that its resource expenses within the primary quarter, which will stops March 31, could decrease to $3.30 every gallon from $3.44 while in the initial 1 / 4 regarding 2012, which CEO Gary Kelly known as "an encouraging trend."

The ordinary fourth-quarter air travel on Southwest as well as it is AirTran Airways subsidiary had been $148.02, up 5.4 percent from $140.38 1 year earlier.

Passengers flew 1.4 p'cent a lot fewer mile after mile on Southwest than the usual year earlier, along with planes have been less 100 % 79.6 percent occupancy, down out of 80.5 percent.

For every one of 2012, Southwest attained $421 million, up from $178 thousand the season before along with it's 40th straight successful year, which usually Kelly said appeared to be "a remarkable task plus a report unmatched from the air travel industry."