JetBlue Airways (NASDAQ: JBLU) reported Q4 EPS of $0.50, $0.07 better than the analyst estimate of $0.43. Revenue for the quarter came in at $1.97 billion versus the consensus estimate of $1.96 billion.

Executing our Plan to Reach our EPS Commitments

“I’d like to thank our 22,000 Crewmembers across our network for all their hard work throughout 2018. I’d also like to congratulate our Crewmembers for operating the airline at 100 percent completion from December 10 through January 11. This is an impressive achievement as we safely delivered our Customers to their destinations during one of the busiest times of the year,” said Robin Hayes, JetBlue’s Chief Executive Officer.

“During 2018 we continued to work on our plan to strengthen the foundation of JetBlue and position the company to thrive. In bringing this very busy year to a close, I could not be prouder of our accomplishments. 2018 was a year of significant fuel volatility, and our team has remained relentlessly focused on executing our plan laid out in Investor Day. We are pleased with the progress we’ve made to-date on our building blocks. We are mindful of the external environment, but remain focused on executing on the initiatives we control, which we believe will create value and drive returns for our Owners.”

“We expect 2019 will be a stepping stone year to deliver on our 2020 goals, and to further improvements beyond 2020. We expect to see margin expansion resulting from our network reallocation, ancillary revenue initiatives, improvements to our fleet and our progress in better controlling our costs. We remain confident in our ability to execute on our building blocks and achieve our $2.50 to $3.00 EPS target in 2020,” said Joanna Geraghty, JetBlue’s President and Chief Operating Officer.

“We are broadly seeing fourth quarter demand trends carry into the first quarter. Our 'clean' RASM is expected to fall between 0.75 and 3.75 percent during the first quarter, which adds back the impact of the calendar shift and weather to our guidance.”

GUIDANCE:

JetBlue Airways sees FY2020 EPS of $2.50-$3.00.

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