AirAsia X has posted a net loss of MYR11.3 million ($3.5 million) during the first quarter, which is a strong decline from a net profit of MYR50.2 million for the year-ago period. Revenue rose by 40% to a record MYR750 million for the quarter, although this was on the back of a 60.1% increase in capacity to 6.2 billion ASKs. Operating expenses during the reporting period rose by 64.1% to MYR786 million, with fuel, aircraft and engineering costs all adversely affected by the decline in value of the Malaysian ringgit against the US dollar. First-quarter RPKs were up 63.3% to 5.3 billion year-over-year, while passenger load factor was up 1.6 points to a record 85.8%. Air Asia X carried over 1 million passengers during the first quarter, an increase of 66.9%.
AirAsia X CEO Azran Osman-Rani said, “The aggressive capacity expansion phase we undertook … is starting to bear fruit. We’ve proven we can stimulate new demand and achieve a market leadership position. As new capacity typically takes 12 months to reach breakeven, we expect to see yield improvement and an earnings turnaround in the second half of this year, after the seasonally weakest second quarter, and taking into account the aviation industry starting to stabilize its capacity roll-out.”
“We recently strengthened the leadership of our commercial function and have implemented new initiatives in revenue management, marketing and distribution to capitalize on the stronger network we have built with more frequencies and connectivity. We expect these initiatives to push our RASK to positive territory for the full year,” Azran said.
