JetBlue Airways (NASDAQ: JBLU) reported Q3 EPS of $0.21, $0.03 worse than the analyst estimate of $0.24. Revenue for the quarter came in at $2.56 billion versus the consensus estimate of $2.52 billion.

Financial Performance and Outlook:

“I’m pleased with the team’s execution in delivering our first quarter of profitability since the pandemic, an important milestone for us. We exceeded our original revenue guidance, maintained controllable costs in-line with our initial outlook despite the impact from hurricanes, resulting in a solid pre-tax margin result,” said Ursula Hurley, JetBlue’s Chief Financial Officer.

“The hurricanes negatively impacted CASM ex-Fuel by roughly one point to CASM-ex in the third quarter with no impact to the fourth quarter. Given the continued fragile aviation ecosystem, we are taking a cautious approach to operational investments and more conservative planning assumptions that we put in place for the summer.

For the fourth quarter, we are forecasting CASM ex-Fuel(2) to increase 8.5% to 10.5% year over three. This represents a sequential improvement of approximately 7 points, driven by efficiencies as we scale capacity up as well as early progress on our recently announced structural cost program.

In the third quarter, we paid down $66 million dollars of debt, funded $260 million dollars in capital expenditures, and paid $25 million dollars related to the Spirit transaction. The favorable Spirit shareholder vote on October 19 also triggered the prepayment of $272 million dollars in the fourth quarter under the terms of our merger agreement. Looking ahead, we remain focused on maintaining a healthy liquidity position.”

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