Nicely observed mate and as you know winter is their slowest time of year. With those sort of revenue passenger kilometres to date and two brand new routes starting in mid December which clearly are not reflected in the above sales growth figures, I think consensus analyst sales growth for the year of 6.9% is too light and we will see earnings and sales revisions as the year unfolds. http://www.4-traders.com/AIR-NEW-ZEA...07/financials/
I see they're putting one of the new Dreamliner's on the Singapore route from mid November. Perfect route for that aircraft. As last year's annual meeting Chris Luxon told us they'd been working really hard on getting their turnaround time down and had achieved a 1 hour turnaround down from initial 2 hour turnarounds with that type. Means it can fly continuously back and forward spending approx 21 of every 24 hours in the air. I'd imagine they're doing the same to other Asian airports with other 787-9's. Its pretty amazing really that they can disembark over 300 passengers, remove their suitcases, remove the freight from the hold, clean the plane, re-provision with fuel for a circa 11 hour flight, food and beverages and load on 300 new passengers, new freight, suitcases and a new crew all in an hour. Makes me exhausted just thinking how they do it.
I think people are going to get quite a surprise by what on track to "exceed" $400m for this half means. Won't surprise me if the first number is a "5" and remember that last year's first half profit was only 43% of full year profit and that with only one new route in the second half, (this year two).
I read the annual meeting commentary of Qantas, thanks for the heads-up. While they were confident of increased profit they're not nearly as bullish as AIR and I am not surprised with comments about mining downturn affecting domestic demand and reducing capacity to match. Other than that sales growth and load factor only modest really. Most of their gains in profitability seem to be coming from their big cost reduction project and cheaper oil.
I think N.Z. analysts are sceptical AIR can fill all the extra international capacity they're putting on but monthly operating stat's to date show they can and probably will. Sales growth at AIR quite markedly superior to Qantas as are their load factors.