AP
Allegiant shares soar as 1Q results beat estimates
Tuesday April 29, 11:43 am ET
Allegiant Travel posts 1st-quarter profit ahead of Wall Street predictions, shares climb
LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Shares of Allegiant Travel Co., which operates an airline marketed to leisure travelers in small cities, soared Tuesday after it posted a flat first-quarter profit hurt by a jump in fuel prices, but beat Wall Street predictions.

Allegiant shares rose $5.30, or 25 percent, to $26.10 in morning trading, after peaking at $26.12 earlier in the day. Over the past 52 weeks, the company's shares have traded between $19.65 and $38.74, and are off 35 percent since the start of the year.
For the quarter ended March 31, Allegiant earned $9.7 million, or 47 cents per share, compared with $9.7 million, or 48 cents per share, for the same quarter in 2007.
The per-share profit came in ahead of Wall Street's target of 34 cents per share, according to analysts polled by Thomson Financial.
Excluding a non-cash mark-to-market gain on fuel derivatives, the company posted an adjusted profit of 38 cents per share in the 2007 quarter.
The recent quarter's results were based on about 20.7 million outstanding shares, while the prior-year's were based on about 20.3 million.
Total operating revenue rose 58 percent to $133.1 million from $84.3 million in the year-ago period, as scheduled service revenue increased 58 percent to $91.7 million and ancillary revenue more than doubled to $27.1 million.
The cost of aircraft fuel more than doubled to $63.5 million, contributing toward a 70 percent jump in total operating expenses to $118.8 million.
Operating margin fell to 10.8 percent from 17 percent in the first quarter of last year.

pretty sweet - they're darned near 100% leisure, i would imagine. so even thus customers the aai ceo calls "inelastic" [sic] are continuing to snap up the leisure fares when the value is good...

to put the margins in perspective - LCC fell short of ALGT's shrunken shrunken even on its best quarter since coming out of bk. DAL's margin on their BEST qtr since bk was about 1/3 of ALGT's margin this past quarter.

the naysayers claim you can't make money selling cheap tix, serving secondary markets and targeting leisure travellers. the company shined in one of the toughest quarters in history.

you better bet ALGT wouldn't even exist under regulation. yet, there's room for them to serve an underserved niche in a deregulated environment.

I can't find your email address, send me an email again and I will forward you some really interesting info on corporate greed at the skybus BOD level.

good for them !

I just sent in my resume. I know folks here have said they aren't hiring, but their website says they are looking for FOs and so do some web listings. I'm not available until August at the earliest anyway.

Say it ain't so, corporate greed at an ULCC.... who's next to succumb to peer pressure?

Yes, they are doing well.

Former G4'er. Good job guys and gals. Keep it up. I am happy to see someone still can turn a profit in this industry.

Some may not think it is a great place to be because of pay, but they are one of the few that are making it work in this mess of an economy.

there could not be a more clear sign that the future of the industry is regional wages and $1.00 per diem for major airlines flying mainline jets.

I mean, with $10mil profit they could afford to pay every single one of their 255 pilots an extra $30000/year and still have $2mil profit in the toughest times the industry has ever seen. Am i failing to account for something here? I realize that stockpiling cash is a good idea for the turbulent times, but it seems to me like this is just entirely artificial profit in that it comes directly out of the pilots' paychecks.