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The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights Allegiant Travel Company, Copa Holdings, JetBlue Airways, American Airlines and Gol Linhas

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For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – March 1, 2023 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Allegiant Travel Company (ALGT - Free Report) , Copa Holdings (CPA - Free Report) , JetBlue Airways (JBLU - Free Report) , American Airlines (AAL - Free Report) and Gol Linhas .

Here are highlights from Tuesday’s Analyst Blog:

Airline Stock Roundup: ALGT, JBLU and More

In the past week, Allegiant Travel Company’s management announced that 27.2% more passengers (system-wide) were transported on various ALGT flights in January 2023 than in the previous year. The stronger-than-expected recovery in air-travel demand from the pandemic lows is leading to this rosy scenario pertaining to air traffic.

The upbeat air-travel demand scenario also resulted in Copa Holdings reporting better-than-expected earnings per share and revenues for fourth-quarter 2022. Fourth-quarter earnings-related updates were discussed in the previous write-up as well. JetBlue Airways was also in the news courtesy of its environmentally-friendly deal with the climate tech company, CHOOOSE.

Recap of the Latest Top Stories

1 In January 2023, Allegiant carried 1.20 million passengers in scheduled service, up 27.6% from the January 2022 actuals. Revenue passenger miles (a measure of traffic) and available seat miles (a measure of capacity) increased 27% and 5.5%, respectively, from the year-ago levels. Load factor (percentage of seats filled by passengers) increased 14.1 points to 83.2% in January 2023, as the traffic increase was greater than the capacity expansion. Moreover, scheduled departures increased 6.4% year over year.

In January 2023, Allegiant carried 27.2% more passengers (system-wide) than that in January 2022. Capacity increased 5.1% from the year-ago month’s reading. Departures (system-wide) improved 6.3% from the January 2022 actuals. The estimated average fuel cost per gallon for January was $3.75 (systemwide).

Currently, Allegiant carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here

2. Copa Holdings’ fourth-quarter 2022 earnings of $4.49 per share surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $4.09 and rose more than 100% year over year. Revenues of $890.6 million beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $883.8 million and improved year over year on the back of passenger revenues.

Passenger revenues (contributed 95.6% to the top line) increased 29.5%, owing to higher yields (up 12.1%). Cargo and mail revenues jumped 69% to $27.09 million, owing to higher cargo volumes and yields. In January, CPA took delivery of one Boeing 737 MAX 9. It anticipates receiving one additional aircraft by the end of the first quarter.

3. JetBlue has partnered CHOOOSE to create a new online platform, which allows passengers to estimate the amount of carbon dioxide emissions from flights. To stop these harmful emissions, passengers can make financial contributions to fund the usage of environment-friendly sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) on JetBlue flights. When compared with traditional petroleum-based fuels, the usage of SAF can bring about an 80% reduction in lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions. In 2022, a mere 0.3% of JetBlue’s fuel consumed was SAF. JBLU aims to convert 10 % of its total fuel to SAF by 2030.

4. Recognizing American Airlines’ efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, Air Transport World named AAL as the 2023 Eco-Airline of the year. Owing to its environmentally-friendly attitude, AAL has improved its fuel efficiency by more than 10% since 2013, in turn saving 1.9 billion gallons of fuel and preventing 19 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. AAL used 2 million gallons of SAF in 2022, thereby doubling its usage year over year.

Performance

Most airline stocks have traded in the red over the five trading days. The NYSE ARCA Airline Index has decreased 1.6% to $60.14. Over the course of the past six months, the NYSE ARCA Airline Index was almost flat.

What's Next in the Airline Space?

Investors await the fourth-quarter 2022 earnings report of the Latin American carrier Gol Linhas, scheduled to be out on Mar 8.

We expect GOL’s performance to have been aided by improved air-travel demand in Latin America. However, high fuel costs are likely to have impeded the bottom-line performance in the to-be-reported quarter.

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Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Inherent in any investment is the potential for loss. This material is being provided for informational purposes only and nothing herein constitutes investment, legal, accounting or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a security. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. It should not be assumed that any investments in securities, companies, sectors or markets identified and described were or will be profitable. All information is current as of the date of herein and is subject to change without notice. Any views or opinions expressed may not reflect those of the firm as a whole. Zacks Investment Research does not engage in investment banking, market making or asset management activities of any securities. These returns are from hypothetical portfolios consisting of stocks with Zacks Rank = 1 that were rebalanced monthly with zero transaction costs. These are not the returns of actual portfolios of stocks. The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index. Visit https://www.zacks.com/performance for information about the performance numbers displayed in this press release.

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