26th Oct 2018 08:17
LONDON (Alliance News) - International Consolidated Airlines Group SA said Friday that its profit increased in the third quarter, despite rising fuel costs and foreign exchange headwinds.
Shares in the Anglo-Spanish group, which owns British Airways, Aer Lingus, Iberia, and Vueling, were trading up 2.4% at 601.60 pence each at London market open.
For the three months to September 30, the company posted pretax profit of EUR1.38 billion up from a restated EUR1.23 billion pretax profit in the comparative quarter a year ago. On an adjusted basis, pretax profit was marginally down to EUR1.42 billion.
Pretax profit in the nine months to the end of September increased 8.6% to EUR3.04 billion from EUR1.99 billion.
Meanwhile, revenue for the third quarter jumped 8.5% to EUR7.14 billion from EUR6.58 billion a year ago. Revenue for the nine month period increased 5.1% to EUR18.35 billion from EUR17.45 billion.
Passenger revenue in the quarter was up 1.3%. On a constant currency basis, it increased 2.4%.
The company recorded a rise in both non-fuel unit costs and fuel costs, up 0.5% and 14.3% respectively.
Chief Executive Officer Willie Walsh said: "These were strong results despite significant fuel cost and foreign exchange headwinds. At constant currency, our passenger unit revenue increased by 2.4% while non-fuel unit costs went down 0.7%."
IAG proposed an interim dividend of 14.5 euro cents per share, up from 12.5 cents paid a year ago.
Looking ahead, IAG expects to deliver an EUR200 million increase in operating profit before exceptional items for 2018. In 2017, operating profit totalled EUR2.95 billion.
IAG also said anticipates an improvement in non-fuel unit costs for the full year.
Furthermore, IAG said it has concluded an investigation into the British Airways customer data theft incident.
On Thursday, IAG said that the investigation into the hacking found that a further attack was carried out between April 21 and July 28.
British Airways notified the holders of 77,000 payment cards that their name, billing address, email address, and card payment details including card number and card verification value could have been compromised.
A further 108,000 customers may also have had their information compromised, though not including their CVV numbers, IAG said on Thursday.
The news follows an announcement at the beginning of September that personal and financial details of British Airways customers had been compromised by an attack between August 21 and September 5.
IAG's probe found that of the 380,000 customers originally identified as being impacted by the hack, 244,000 had actually been effected.
Since September, British Airways has confirmed it has seen no verified fraud cases.
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