IndiGo Q4 Results: Net profit more than doubles to Rs 1,895 crore on healthy demand for air travel

IndiGo has benefited from a strong post-pandemic recovery in domestic air travel in the world's third-largest aviation market.

Interglobe Aviation Ltd, which runs low-cost airline IndiGo, on May 23, reported a profit of Rs 1894.8 crore for the quarter ended March 31, 2024, flying into its sixth straight quarter in green, as strong demand outweighed fuel price hike.

The biggest budget airline by market share had posted a net profit of Rs 919 crore in the year-ago period but had reported a loss of Rs 1,680 crore in Q4FY22.

The airline's bottomline was in line with the Street projection of a bottomline of Rs 1,900 crore, according to an average of five brokerages. IndiGo profits had zoomed 111 percent in the October-December quarter.

The company's revenue from operations grew 26 percent to Rs 17,825.3 crore from Rs 14,161 last fiscal, but missed an estimate of Rs 19,452 crore.

The carrier's EBITDAR (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortisation and rent) jumped to Rs 4,412.3 crore as against Rs 2,966.5 crore a year back, while its margin increased to 24.8 percent from 20.9 percent.

IndiGo did not provide a breakup of its passenger ticket revenues and ancillary revenues in Q4FY24.

The airline had reported a passenger ticket revenue of Rs 12,435 crore and ancillary revenue of Rs 1,445 crore last year.

IndiGo's yields, a metric for profitability, increased 7 percent year-over-year to Rs 5.19 per kilometre. The carrier's load factor, or the passenger carrying capacity being utilised, improved by 2.1 percentage points to 86.3 percent.

“The strong execution of our strategy has yielded consistent results for us as we achieved the targets that we had set for ourselves as a team at the beginning of the year. My sincere gratitude to our 107 million customers for placing their trust in us and to all my IndiGo colleagues for their great work and relentless dedication," IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers said.

The airline had flown in the red for the first two quarters of FY23 on escalating fuel costs and volatility in foreign exchange. However, it has benefited from a strong post-pandemic recovery in domestic air travel in the world's third-largest aviation market.

While IndiGo is also gained on grounded rival Go First, which had filed for bankruptcy last year, it faces headwinds from new competitors like Akasa Air and the Tata Group, which took over Air India and started the process of merging it with Vistara.

The airline carried 235.97 lakh passengers, commanding a market share of 60.3 percent during the quarter. In the year-ago period, IndiGo carried 209.07 lakh passengers commanding a market share of 55.7 percent.

In the pre-pandemic year of 2019, during the January-March quarter, IndiGo had carried 156.93 lakh passengers, which translated to a market share of 44.3 percent during the quarter.

The operating performance was marred by high fuel costs as revenue per available seat kilometre (RASK) stood at Rs 5.14, whereas cost per ASK (CASK) was at Rs 4.62. In the same period last year the airline's RASK was Rs 4.68 while CASK was Rs 4.38.

The company's total debt rose 14.3 percent on-year to Rs 51,280 crore in the March quarter, while total cash rose by 48.3 percent to Rs 34,737.5 crore including free cash of Rs 20,823 crore.

The airliner had 367 aircraft in its fleet at the end of the quarter up from 358 in the previous quarter. IndiGo operated at a peak of 2,021 daily flights during the quarter, including non-scheduled flights.

Shares of IndiGo on May 22 closed 1.3 percent higher at Rs 4,414.9 apiece on the BSE.