United Airlines reduced its quarterly loss to $434 million and posted surprisingly strong revenue as U.S. vacation travel picked up.
In reporting its second-quarter results Tuesday, the Chicago-based airline said it expects to earn a pretax profit in the remaining two quarters of the year. That would break a string of six-straight money-losing quarters since the pandemic began to crush air travel.
United’s shares rose 6.6% in regular trading Tuesday as travel stocks rebounded from large losses on Monday. In extended trading after the results were released, the shares slipped about 0.5%.
More than 2 million people a day have boarded planes in the U.S. this month, nearly the double the number that were flying back in March.
The recovery, however, is very fragile. Travel is still down 20% from pre-pandemic July 2019. High-fare corporate and international flyers, who contribute an oversized portion of United’s revenue, are still mostly absent United filled 83% of seats on domestic flights but only 53% on international ones.
United’s second-quarter loss would have been far worse $1.3 billion without more than $1 billion in federal pandemic aid, which was partly offset by one-time charges. The airline was also hit by higher expenses for jet fuel.
Still, the loss was much smaller than the $1.63 billion United lost a year earlier and the $1.36 billion loss it suffered in the first quarter of this year.
Excluding the federal payroll aid and other items, Chicago-based United Airlines Holdings Inc. said its adjusted loss worked out to $3.91 per share. That was slightly better than the $4.01 per share loss forecast by analysts in a FactSet survey.
Revenue rose from a year ago to $5.47 billion, beating Wall Street’s prediction of $5.34 billion.
The company declined to make executives available to discuss the results. It scheduled a call with analysts and reporters for Wednesday.
In the April-June period, United operated barely more than half the schedule it offered in the same three months of 2019, but it plans to add flights in the third quarter and run 74% of its pre-pandemic operation.
Last month, United signaled its confidence in the recovery by placing its largest-ever order for new jets 270 from Boeing and Airbus to replace aging planes and allow for growth after the pandemic.
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