DENVER—Frontier Airlines Holding Inc. said Thursday the fiscal second-quarter profit was its best performance since before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, crediting a record number of passengers and a drop in fuel expenses.
The results, which beat Wall Street estimates, mirrored a trend across the industry as a number of carriers reported healthy results.
Although the seasonal demand appears to have continued this fall, Frontier expects to post a pretax loss in the October-to-December quarter because of fuel prices hovering around $90 per barrel, Chief Executive Officer Sean Menke said. The loss for the quarter ending in December should be smaller than the one recorded in the previous year.
For the fiscal 2008 second quarter, Frontier reported net income of $17.3 million, or 39 cents a share, compared with net income of $500,000, or 1 cent a share, in the second quarter of 2007.
Revenue totaled $373 million in the quarter ending Sept. 30 compared with $312.5 million in the year-ago quarter.
The most recent quarter included special items that, combined, decreased net income by 6 cents a share. They included $2.8 million in startup costs for Frontier’s turboprop subsidiary, Lynx Aviation, and accelerated depreciation totaling $1.5 million for a seat replacement project.
In the previous quarter, special items, net of income taxes and bonuses, lowered net income by 6 cents a share. They included gains on the sale of Boeing assets and Lynx startup costs.
Chief Financial Officer Paul Tate said the quarter was the best since the 2001 terrorist attacks which hurt the travel industry as a whole.
Menke credited the summer’s business which boosted overall revenue by 19.4 percent even though capacity grew by 12 percent. The company also recorded a 5 percent drop in fuel costs.
Its load factor, an industry measure of how many seats are filled, rose to 85 percent, compared with 77.5 percent in the year-ago quarter while the average fare decreased about 1 percent.
“It’s a big challenge to grow that much and still have revenue improvement,” Tate said.
In the first six months, Frontier recorded net income of $13.8 million, or 33 cents a share, compared with $4.5 million, or 12 cents a share, in the first six months of fiscal 2007. Revenue totaled $717.7 million, compared with $617.3 million in the year-ago period.
The Denver-based airline released the results after the market closed Thursday. Its shares were unchanged Thursday at $6.75 a share.
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