Spirit Airlines (NYSE:SAVE) stock jumped Tuesday after the company posted stronger-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings. Spirit Airlines reported earnings of 12 cents per share excluding items, nine cents higher than the analysts’ estimate.
For the fourth quarter 2022, the Florida-based airline notched $0.12 in adjusted earnings per share on $1.39B in revenue. The latter met analyst expectations, but the former exceeded estimates by 400%.
“Leisure demand has remained strong and our team is doing a great job maximizing revenue production," CEO Ted Christie commented. "In the fourth quarter 2022, despite a significant number of weather-related flight cancellations during the peak holiday period, our team delivered better-than-expected unit revenue performance. In fact, when adjusting for capacity increases, our unit revenue performance in the fourth quarter was amongst the best in the industry, when compared to 2019.”
Moving forward, the carrier expects total revenue per available seat mile for Q1 2023 to be up 23% to 24.5% as compared to Q1 2022. Available seat miles are expected to increase 13.2% for the quarter. For the full-year available seat miles are expected to increase 19% to 22%.
SAVE gained 30 cents, or 1.5%, to $19.90.
