August 19, 2011

AirAsia's 1H earnings to hit RM442m

Stock Name: AIRASIA
Company Name: AIRASIA BHD
Research House: MIDFPrice Call: BUYTarget Price: 4.60



AirAsia Bhd's earnings for the first half of this year is expected jump by 4.6 per cent to RM442.3 million as compared to a year ago, on the back of a commendable year-to-date operating statistics.

The airline, which is expected to announce its second quarter results next week, saw its available seat kilometres (ASK) for the first half of 2011 grow by 7.9 per cent year-on-year (yoy) to 12.810 billion.

The revenue passenger kilometres (RPK) increased by 23.2 per cent yoy to 10.358 billion.

"For the second quarter, we expect earnings to hit RM270.4 million, a 35.9 per cent yoy jump," said MIDF Research in its report today.

The number of passengers carried in the second quarter rose by 14.9 per cent yoy to 4.5 million while the seat load factor improved by four percentage points to 81 per cent with an 9.1 per cent yoy increase in seat capacity to 5.5 million.

"Also, we expect that AirAsia will perform well in the second half of 2011, as evident from the continuing good performance highlighted by its July operating statistics," said the research house.

Although high fuel costs could shrink AirAsia's bottomline, the move to reimpose the fuel surcharge since February would help it to cushion some the impact.

"While we expect global economic conditions to remain uncertain, we believe that AirAsia will weather the storm due to its position as a low cost carrier," MIDF Research said.

MIDF has made a trading "buy" recommendation with a target price of RM4.60.

At 11.55 am, AirAsia was down eight sen to RM3.64. -- BERNAMA

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