SkyWest Q1 Earnings & Revenues Beat Estimates, Improve Y/Y

SkyWest, Inc. (SKYW) reported better-than-expected first-quarter 2025 results wherein both earnings and revenues surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate and improved on a year-over-year basis.

Quarterly earnings per share (EPS) of $2.42 outpaced the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $2.04 and improved 66% year over year. Revenues of $948.5 million beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $931.4 million and improved 18% year over year.

Revenues from flying agreements (contributing 96.5% to the top line) grew 17.6% from the prior-year reported figure of $915.99 million. The airline carried 13.6% more passengers in the reported quarter on a year-over-year basis. Departures were 19.1% more on a year-over-year basis. The passenger load factor (percentage of seats filled by passengers) decreased 2.2 points to 78.6%.

SkyWest, Inc. Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise

SkyWest, Inc. price-consensus-eps-surprise-chart | SkyWest, Inc. Quote

Chip Childs, president and chief executive officer of SkyWest, stated, “Although the airline industry is dealing with uncertain macroeconomic factors, demand for our product remains solid. We continue to be committed to adding value to our partners’ network strategies, improving daily scheduled service to smaller communities, and deploying our capital to improve our fleet for long-term opportunities. I want to thank our teams for continuing to deliver an exceptional product through the challenging winter conditions of the first quarter.”

Concurrent with its first-quarter 2025 results, SkyWest also announced that it had inked a multi-year contract extension with Delta Air Lines DAL for five CRJ700 and 11 CRJ900 aircraft

By 2026-end, SkyWest is scheduled to operate 278 E175 aircraft.

Operating expenses were $809 million, up 15% from the year-ago quarter. The upside was due to expected incremental maintenance costs incurred in SKYW’s CRJ fleet and the increase in flight production year over year, partially offset by operating efficiencies from higher utilization of the company’s fleet.

At the first-quarter end, the company had cash and marketable securities of $750.88 million compared with $801.62 million reported at the prior-quarter end. Long-term debt (net of current maturities) was $2.07 billion compared with $2.14 billion reported at the end of the prior quarter.

Per its previously announced share repurchase program authorized by SKYW’s board of directors in May 2023, SKYW repurchased 141,000 shares of common stock for $13.7 million during the first quarter of 2025. As of March 31, 2025, SkyWest had $34 million available under its current share repurchase program

Capital expenditures during the reported quarter were $73 million, which included the purchase of four CRJ550 aircraft, spare engines and other fixed assets.

SKYW’s Zacks Rank

Currently, SkyWest carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).  You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

We note that another player from the Zacks Airline industry, JetBlue Airways Corporation JBLU, will report its first-quarter earnings numbers later this month. (See the Zacks Earnings Calendar to stay ahead of market-making news.)

JetBlue is a low-cost airline, headquartered in Long Island City, NY. JBLU currently has an Earnings ESP of +2.33% and a Zacks Rank #3. The company is slated to report first-quarter 2025 results on April 29.

Low fuel costs are likely to have aided JBLU’s bottom line in the to-be-reported quarter. JBLU beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate in each of the last four quarters. The average beat is 62.22%.

Q1 Performance of Another Airline Company

United Airlines

United Airlines’ UAL first-quarter 2025 EPS (excluding 25 cents from non-recurring items) of 91 cents surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 75 cents. In the year-ago quarter, the Chicago-based airline reported a loss of 15 cents per share. 

Operating revenues of $13.21 billion fell marginally short of the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $13.22 billion. The top line increased 5.4% year over year despite the tariff-induced slowdown in domestic air travel demand. Passenger revenues (which accounted for 89.7% of the top line) rose 4.8% to $11.9 billion. UAL flights transported 40,806 passengers in the first quarter, up 3.8% year over year.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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