InterGlobe Aviation Ltd, the parent company of India's largest budget airline IndiGo, on February 2 posted an 111 percent jump in net profit in the December quarter, helped led by continued demand for air travel and a fuel surcharge introduced in October.
Net profit came in at Rs 2,998.12 crore against Rs 1,422.6 crore in the year-ago, the air carrier told exchanges.
Revenue surged 30 percent to Rs 19,452.15 crore.
IndiGo's total income jumped to Rs 20,062.2 crore from Rs 15,410.2 crore in the year-ago period, the release said.
The airline carried 243.10 lakh passengers, commanding a market share of 62.1 percent during the quarter. In the year-ago period, IndiGo carried 199.70 lakh passengers commanding a market share of 55.7 percent.
In the pre-pandemic year of 2019, during the October-December quarter, IndiGo had carried 181.82 lakh passengers, which translated to a market share of 47.5 percent during the quarter.
Sequentially, IndiGo had reported a profit of Rs 189 crore on sales of Rs 14,943 crore in Q2 FY23-24 and a profit of Rs 3,090 crore on sales of Rs 16,683.1 crore in Q1FY2023-24.
IndiGo managed to surpass market expectations with its Q3FY2024 results.
Prabhudas Lilladher had expected InterGlobe Aviation to report a net profit of Rs. 2,446.9 crore and net sales of Rs. 18,120.7 crore.
"With these 5 consecutive quarters of profit we continue to recover from the losses of Covid and have now become net worth positive again," the company's Chief Executive Officer Pieter Elbers said.
For the quarter, the company said its passenger ticket revenues stood at Rs 17,157.2 crore increased by 30.3 percent YoY and ancillary revenues at Rs 1,760 crore rose 23.8 percent compared to the same period last year.
At the operating level, earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortisation and rent cost (EBITDAR) profit or consolidated operating profit for the quarter came in at Rs 5,475.1 crore as against an operating profit of Rs 3,399 crore in the year-ago quarter.
Available seat kilometres rose 26.8 percent on YoY basis to 36.5 billion, while revenue passenger kilometres surged 27.8 percent on-year to 31.3 billion.
The load factor for the no-frills airline stood at 85.8 percent at the end of the December quarter as against 85.1 percent in the year-ago period.
The operating performance was marred by high fuel costs as revenue per available seat kilometre (RASK) stood at Rs 5.34, whereas cost per ASK (CASK) was at Rs 4.52.
InterGlobe Aviation's yield per passenger rose to Rs 5.34 in the December quarter from Rs 5.38 a year ago, the company said.
The company's total debt rose 15.1 percent on-year to Rs 51,187.5 crore in the December quarter, while total cash rose by 47.9 percent to Rs 32,428 crore including free cash of Rs 19,199.6 crore.
The airliner had 358 aircraft in its fleet at the end of the quarter up from 334 in the previous quarter. IndiGo operated at a peak of 2,016 daily flights during the quarter, including non-scheduled flights.
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