Mumbai: Bolstered by higher revenues and rise in passenger traffic, Jet Airways on Friday reported a consolidated net profit of Rs 226.4 crore for the three months ended June.
The country's second largest carrier, which is implementing a three-year turnaround programme, also benefitted from lower oil prices and a one-time gain from sale and leaseback of engines.
In the year-ago period, it had net loss of Rs 258 crore.
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Meanwhile, Etihad Airways' President and CEO James Hogan has been nominated as the Vice Chairman of Jet Airways. Etihad holds 24 per cent stake in the Indian carrier.
Jet Airways' strong quarterly show came on the back of higher revenues and increase in passenger traffic, which pushed its revenue up over 10 per cent to Rs 5,658 crore. In the year-ago period, the same stood at Rs 5,097 crore.
In the latest June quarter, other income was Rs 128 crore, out of which Rs 30 crore was profit from sale and leaseback of engines.
The Naresh Goyal-led airline had last reported a net profit in the third quarter of last fiscal, after being in the red in the past seven successive quarters.
The improved performance provides further evidence of the growing momentum of the three-year turnaround of Jet Airways, chairman Naresh Goyal told reporters here today.
Passenger revenues climbed 10.4 percent to Rs 4,707 crore in the latest June quarter. It carried 6.29 million passengers in the quarter as against 5.19 million a year ago.
The combined passenger load factor in the reporting quarter rose 2.2 percentage points to 82.4 percent over the year ago period when it stood at 80.2 percent.
"This improvement is largely attributable to the optimised network, which ensures tighter domestic and international network integration," chief executive Cramel Ball said.
Goyal said the increased code-share between its partner Etihad helped the airline push down its losses by half in the last fiscal and reiterated optimism that by 2017 the airline could be fully profitable.
"Under our three-year turnaround strategy, we should be reducing losses in 2015, consolidating in 2016 and breaking even in 2017," Ball said.
As much as 59 percent of the revenue came from international operations, Goyal added.
Jet is the second airline to report profit for the June quarter after the second largest low-cost carrier Spicejet reported a net of Rs 7.18 crore.
"Our first quarter performance demonstrates once again that the measures we are taking to bring the business back to profitability are having the desired result," Goyal said.
Synergies with partner carriers, implementation of a consistent, full service, single-brand strategy across the entire domestic airline operation, among others, also contributed to the airline's better performance, Goyal said.
Despite increasingly competitive domestic landscape driven by aggressive new market entrants, the carrier's market share in India increased to 21.9 per cent in the June quarter.
In a statement, it said the domestic capacity grew 13.3 percent and passenger traffic rose 25.4 percent in the three months ended June.
International passenger traffic went up 12.4 percent during the June quarter. "The quarter witnessed a significant 51 percent growth in overall code share traffic while at the same time the code share traffic by strategic partner Etihad Airways and its partner airlines grew by 181 percent," the statement said.
According to Ball, competitive and structural challenges in the Indian aviation market continue to put pressure on its yields and costs.
"By virtue of Jet Airways' equity relationship with Etihad Airways and its partner airlines, significant savings and synergies are achieved through joint maintenance and ground handling facilities, cabin crew training and common procurement of aircraft, fuel, and insurance," he said.
When asked about debt reduction plan, he said, it is a continuous effort which has come down to little over Rs 11,100 crore currently.
However, Ball parried a question on fund raising plans for the year.
Shares of Jet Airways today settled at Rs 400.20, up 7.94 percent on BSE, as against a 1.88 percent gains in the benchmark.
