Australian airline Qantas on Thursday reported that its statuary profit after tax for the six months ending on December 31 dropped by 13% to $869 million Australian ($570 million US).
Underlying profit before tax was $1.25 billion for the period, a decline of $183 million year-on-year. Earnings were 13% lower than the same period a year earlier as fares and capacity continued to normalize.
Lower fares contributed to reduced revenue per available seat kilometre, which had an impact on profit of around $600 million, while freight yields fell by $146 million. This was mostly offset by contribution from increased flying of $485 million and unwinding of transition costs from the post-Covid restart of $179 million.
Revenue and other income for the period was $11.13 billion, up from $9.91 billion last year.
The Qantas Group announced several major investments, including an accelerated rollout of Wi-Fi on international flights and a major upgrade to digital platforms.
Qantas Group confirmed eight additional Airbus A321XLRs for Qantas Domestic from its existing order book announced as part of the carrier's domestic fleet renewal program. This brings the number of Qantas A321XLRs on order to a total of 28, with the first due to arrive in early 2025.
In the first half of the calendar year, the carrier's low-cost arm Jetstar will increase its domestic flying by around 240,000 seats and its international flying by around 200,000 seats (compared with the six months before that) to popular destinations such as Bali, South Korea, Japan as well as Cairns and Sunshine Coast domestically.
Qantas said its board also approved a return to shareholders of up to $400 million in the form of an on-market share buyback. This is in addition to the outstanding balance of $48 million from the buy-back announced last year.
The carrier sees strong travel demand across the portfolio. Unit revenue is expected to remain stable for domestic and continue to normalize for international as market capacity returns.