INDIGO REPORTS FOURTH STRAIGHT QUARTERLY LOSS, REVENUE HALVES

Bengaluru, Jan. 28: Interglobe Aviation Ltd, which runs India’s biggest airline IndiGo, reported its fourth straight quarterly loss on Thursday, as the Covid-19 pandemic kept air travel well below normal levels.

Its loss in the December quarter was smaller than in the previous two quarters, when the health crisis had brought global air travel to a halt, but the company’s revenue halved from a year earlier, signalling that a full recovery was still far away.

The festive season in October and November saw more air travel, and domestic traffic has now recovered to about 80 per cent of pre-pandemic levels, mitigating some of Interglobe’s losses during the quarter.

IndiGo also benefited from lower fuel costs, which plunged nearly 66 per cent year-over-year.

“The low level of international capacity continues to remain a major concern for us and continues to hurt our financials,” CEO Ronojoy Dutta said on a conference call with analysts.

IndiGo expects to reach 50 per cent of its pre-pandemic international capacity only by mid-2022, and 100 per cent by end2022, Dutta said.

“We’d like to hit the seasonally strong first quarter next year with all cylinders running, and at full capacity, at least domestically,” he added.

IndiGo said it expects current-quarter average seat kilometers—a measure of passenger-carrying capacity—to be 75-80 per cent of the capacity of the same period last year.

The New Delhi-based airline’s daily average cash burn had halved to Rs 15 crore in the quarter from June-quarter levels.