Lufthansa shares in the plus before the market: Lufthansa can almost double sales – black figures

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The airline met the operating earnings forecast it raised in December and, given the continued strong demand for flight tickets, is promising further growth for the current year.

Sales rose by 95 percent to 32.8 billion euros, from 16.8 billion in the previous year, as the MDAX-listed group announced. Adjusted earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) reached EUR 1.509 billion, just above the Group’s forecast of EUR 1.5 billion.

Consolidated profit was 791 million euros, and the Lufthansa Group earned 66 cents per share. In the previous year, the group had posted a loss of 2.19 billion euros or 2.99 euros per share.

In 2023 as a whole, the Group is aiming for a further significant improvement in Adjusted EBIT. Consistent with usual seasonality, results are expected to be particularly strong in the second and third quarters. In the first quarter, the operating result is expected to be negative.

The freight subsidiary Lufthansa Cargo was once again the largest source of profit with a record result of 1.6 billion euros, while the passenger airlines still made a loss of 300 million euros due to the weak first half of the year. High costs of 555 million euros to compensate customers for flight cancellations and delays in the summer, when there was a shortage of staff everywhere in aviation, also had an impact. The airlines of the group – in addition to Lufthansa and the holiday airline Eurowings, the Swiss Swiss, Austrian Airlines (AUA) and Brussels Airlines – carried a total of 102 million passengers in 2022, more than twice as many as in the previous year. Swiss and AUA were the first to make a profit again.

CONFIDENCE FOR 2023

In the current year, the recovery back to the pre-crisis level of 2019 should continue: Adjusted operating profit should increase significantly and a big step towards the goal for 2024 should be taken. The return target of eight percent corresponds to more than three billion euros in operating profit, Lufthansa explained. The available capacity at the passenger airlines is to be increased to 85 to 90 percent from 72 percent last year. The competition is also optimistic: the British Airways and Iberia mother IAG took an operating result of 1.8 to 2.3 billion euros before after 1.2 billion in the past year. Air France-KLM is counting on a further recovery and wants to increase the number of seats almost to the capacity of 2019 after 85 percent in 2022. Europe’s largest low-cost airline Ryanair wants to sell 168 million tickets this year, significantly more than before the pandemic.

At the freight subsidiary Lufthansa Cargo, the largest source of profit during the Corona crisis, sales and earnings are expected to decline after a special boom. Transport prices in aviation had risen sharply during the corona pandemic – last year they were more than twice as high as in 2019. This is now being reversed with the weaker economy and growing freight capacities worldwide. Freight prices are falling, but according to Lufthansa, there will be no slump to the pre-crisis level.

In pre-market trading on Tradegate, the Lufthansa share temporarily rose by 0.3 percent to EUR 9.93.

FRANKFURT (Dow Jones/Reuters)

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