Hawaiian Airlines has high hopes for its new Beijing service, but CEO Mark Dunkerley acknowledges the need to be patient.
The state’s largest carrier began three-times-a-week service on April 16 to China, which is considered the next growth market for Hawaii tourism.
"I think Beijing, and China as a whole, is a very interesting market," Dunkerley said in a phone interview Tuesday. "It started from a much lower familiarity for everyone here in Hawaii, and the numbers traveling as of yet are not great, particularly in comparison to some other markets in Japan. However, I think we are awed by the potential size of this market, and we are very much interested in seeing it develop to be the most significant visitor market into Hawaii."
Dunkerley’s comments came after the company reported a $5.1 million first-quarter loss Tuesday, which was an improvement from a $17.1 million loss in the year-earlier quarter. Revenue rose to $524.9 million from $490.8 million.
Dunkerley said the first quarter was characterized by good cost control and a strong performance from domestic operations.
The loss per share during the January-March period was 10 cents compared with a loss of 33 cents a share in the first quarter of 2013.
Adjusted for fuel hedging, Hawaiian had a loss of $870,000, or 2 cents a share. That beat analysts’ consensus estimate of a loss of 12 cents a share. In the year-earlier period, Hawaiian had an adjusted loss of $14.8 million, or 29 cents a share.
Fuel hedging is a calculated bet against the future price of fuel and allows the company to lock in a price for fuel it will need in the future.
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FIRST-QUARTER LOSS
$5.1 million
YEAR-EARLIER LOSS
$17.1 million
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Dunkerley said improvement trends he had seen over the last couple of quarters continued in the January-March period.
"We’ve seen good control keeping costs low," he said. "At the same time, we’ve got good demand across our domestic business and our international business. The challenges that we face at the moment are unfavorable exchange rates, which affects a couple of our international markets (Japan and Australia), and the expected infancy of some of our newest routes. But overall this has been a good quarter, and we are looking forward to continuing to improve through 2014."
Baltimore-based airline analyst Joseph DeNardi, who called Hawaiian’s 6.9 percent revenue growth last quarter better than he expected, said the airline has a strong management team, but expressed some doubt about China.
"We’re a little bit cautious on their growth plans into China because I think the spending that those plans are going to require is pretty aggressive," said DeNardi of investment bank Stifel.
Hawaiian Chief Commercial Officer Peter Ingram said the number of air seats flown by all airlines to Hawaii from North America declined 0.5 percent in the first quarter and is expected to be up 2 percent in the current quarter before increasing 6 percent during the summer peak in the third quarter. That’s good news for Hawaiian, which last year had its earnings hurt by overcapacity in the North America market.
"What isn’t happening is the rapid capacity growth we saw last year," Dunkerley said. "Flat to modest capacity increases is about right given the level of demand."
Dunkerley said Hawaiian likely will expand later this year after it takes delivery of another Airbus A330-200 in November.
"We are currently looking at the alternatives to what we may do with the extra capacity," he said.
Dunkerley said the airline also is taking a wait-and-see approach to its new ‘Ohana by Hawaiian operation before determining whether to expand that turboprop service. ‘Ohana, which began operating in March, accounts for less than 5 percent of Hawaiian’s interisland operations.
"We’ve been extremely pleased by the early results of our new service to Lanai and Molokai," Dunkerley said. "Both of them are doing pretty well. Lanai, we recognize, will take a little longer to mature because a fair portion of that traffic are visitors from outside the state who typically book months in advance, and we haven’t been in the market long enough to take advantage of that."
The stock of Hawaiian’s parent, Hawaiian Holdings Inc., rose 28 cents Tuesday to $13.69 on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The earnings were announced after the market closed.
