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Solid Cargo Revenues & Low Fuel Costs Aid Azul Amid Pandemic

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We recently issued an updated report on Azul S.A. (AZUL - Free Report) .

Like many other transportation companies, Azul has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic-related uncertainties.

Azul has been witnessing significant fall in air-travel demand in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. Evidently, the company’s passenger revenues (contributing approximately 70.3% to the top line) tanked 88.6% year over year in the second quarter of 2020. Consolidated load factor (percentage of seats filled by passengers) slumped 11.3 percentage points to 72.8% as traffic decline (85.2%) was more than the capacity reduction (82.9%) during the June-end quarter. With the health disaster showing sluggish signs of recovery, the company expects to achieve capacity levels of roughly 60% of pre-coronavirus levels by December 2020.

Declining fuel costs are a positive amid this global crisis. Notably, fuel price per litre plummeted 42% in the April-June quarter. Low fuel costs partly offset the negative impact of the pandemic-induced demand slump during the recently-reported quarter.

Moreover, solid cargo revenues, mainly due to the expansion of Azul's e-commerce logistics business, (accounted for roughly 20% of second-quarter cargo revenues) are encouraging. The company’s cargo business unit registered a 12.9% increase in first-half 2020 revenues. Azul's focus on its cargo unit in the face of dwindling passenger revenues is impressive. The company anticipates cargo revenues to increase year over year in the third quarter.

Zacks Rank & Key Picks

Azul currently carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell).

Some better-ranked stocks in the Zacks Transportation sector are Werner Enterprises (WERN - Free Report) , Canadian Pacific Railway Limited (CP - Free Report) and Landstar System, Inc. (LSTR - Free Report) . Werner sports a Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy), while Canadian Pacific and Landstar carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) at present. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

The long-term earnings (three to five years) growth rate for Canadian Pacific, Landstar and Werner is estimated at 8%, 12% and 8.5%, respectively.

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