Singapore Airlines’ (SIA) Feb 17 operating results saw passenger traffic growth outpacing passenger capacity growth strongly resulting in a solid 3.2ppt YoY improvement in passenger load factor (PLF) to 80.6% for its parent airline.

PLFs were stronger across all route regions for parent airline except the South West Pacific, which is facing intensifying competition from the aggressively expanding Chinese airlines. PLF of SilkAir and Scoot fell 0.9ppt and 1.7ppt to 73.1% and 85.1%, respectively, while TigerAir’s PLF increased 1.4ppt to 83.0%.

Overall, SIA passenger airlines saw a 2.4ppt improvement in PLF to 80.7% as capacity grew at a slower 0.9% compared to traffic growth of 4.1%. As for SIA Cargo, load factor also improved 2.4ppt YoY to 61.4% mainly driven by growth at its East Asia route region.

In our view, if the strong operating statistics persist into Mar 17, SIA’s 4QFY17 earnings may potentially surprise on the upside. That said, these stronger PLFs could also be a result of sacrificing yields to gain higher traffic.

Hence, without further details, we maintain HOLD with an unchanged FV of S$10.36 on SIA for now.

Source: OCBC Research - 27 Mar 2017