SINGAPORE (July 18): UOB KayHian is maintaining its “hold” call on Singapore Airlines (SIA) with a target price of $10.00 on higher passenger load factors (PLF) in June.
The group’s PLF increased 4.6 ppt to 82.7% in June, due to higher passenger carriage registered for all regions, especially on the Kangaroo routes.
The restructuring in Americas network as well as higher passenger volumes across routes to West Asia and Africa, also contributed to the increased PLFs in the respective regions.
Meanwhile, its passenger carriage increased 5.4% compared to the previous year, against a capacity contraction of 0.9%.
In a Tuesday report, UOB notes that SIA’s parent airline's pax load factors rose 4.9 ppt y-o-y in June, on the back of a 5% rise in pax traffic.
SilkAir’s systemwide passenger carriage increased 23.9% y-o-y, while its PLF improved 5.7 ppt to 73.8%.
Budget Aviation Holdings (BAH) – which includes Scoot and TigerAir – also “fared well” as its systemwide passenger carriage increased 17.8% y-o-y, while PLF improved 2.3 ppt to 85.8%.
BAH also recently launched its maiden European long-haul service to Athens in June.
Concurrently, SIA’s cargo loads factor (CLF) saw an improvement with a 4.5 ppt growth y-o-y, on the back of a 7.2% increase in cargo traffic.
Shares in SIA are trading at $10.06 as of 11.42am.
