We are pleased to send you herewith the December report of the Airlines Financial Monitor.
Key points:
The industry-wide EBIT profit margin remained broadly unchanged in Q3 relative to a year ago, at a robust 14.7% of revenues. A decline in the margin in the North American region was partly offset by increases elsewhere.
Global airline share prices ended 2017 almost 29% higher than where they started, with sizeable gains for European and Asia Pacific airlines. Airline shares outperformed the global equity market by 7 percentage points.
Industry-wide passenger yields are currently broadly unchanged from where they were a year ago. Against a backdrop of robust global economic growth, and rising input costs, we forecast yields to rise modestly in 2018.
Indeed, oil prices continued to trend upwards into the New Year, driven by OPEC-led production cuts. At the time of writing, the Brent crude oil price is around $70/bbl "“ its highest level since December 2014.
Year-on-year growth in both passenger and freight volumes is carrying solid momentum into 2018, alongside elevated load factors: the seasonally adjusted (SA) passenger load factor rose above 82% for the first time on record in November, while the SA freight load factor is continuing to maintain levels last seen in late-2014.
The ongoing pick-up in global trade conditions is continuing to support premium-class demand, particularly on some key markets to, from, and within the important manufacturing region of Asia.
