United Airlines stock rises on Q1 results, Q2 guidance

United Airlines (UAL) reported first quarter results that were better than Wall Street had expected. The airline posted an adjusted loss per share of $0.15. Analysts had been expecting a loss of $0.57. Operating revenue of $12.54 billion was better than the Bloomberg estimates of $12.44 billion.

United's second quarter adjusted earnings per share guidance of $3.75-$4.25 topped expectations of $3.73.

Yahoo Finance's Josh Lipton and Julie Hyman break down United's Q1 results in the video above.

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This post was written by Stephanie Mikulich.

Video Transcript

JOSH LIPTON: United Airlines reporting and they are popping here in the after hours. Get to the numbers, adjusted loss $0.15 per share versus it looks like an estimated loss of $0.57. Operating revenue clocks in at 12.54 billion. The estimate was 12.44 billion. So better there than expected cost revenue impact from Max nine groundings 200 million. So they are breaking that out and putting more color on that. Double digit percentage boost in business demand. They call out as well as saying, demand environment remains strong.

So initially, remember this stock was flat year to date heading into this print. But it's actually down more than 10% since early April. But you can see a nice pop here. At least, initially in the after hours.

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, it's interesting because the company came out back in January when it first gave us some details around what the situation was going to cost. At that time, it said the loss would be $35.85. So it obviously was better than the range that it itself provided. Let alone what analysts have been anticipating. So we'll wait for the call to see exactly why that is, that it wasn't as bad as had been feared here. How did they manage the costs around the grounding of those planes.

I think that is going to be the main question here. If you look at passenger revenue per available seat mile, which is one of the important metrics for the airlines. It came in at $15.79. Which is also a little bit above estimates and up 1% year over year. So they were able to get higher revenue per passenger not hugely higher. Only 1% higher year over year. But still a little bit higher so that perhaps contributed to it as well. And the revenue, the overall passenger miles flown was up 9.3%.

So reflecting what we've heard from some of the other airlines. Particularly delta that there were still demand. Certainly, it's just a question in the case of United of whether it's able to meet that demand because of the grounding of some of these planes.

JOSH LIPTON: Yeah. Another big question for sure in the call, Joe is going to be regulators. I mean, the FAA increasing oversight after this series of really just headline making mishaps. And so I think investors are going to be looking for any color insight about that safety audit.