Shares of American Airlines Group Inc. AAL rallied 1.8% in premarket trading Thursday, after the air carrier reported the most quarterly profit since before the COVID pandemic. The company swung to net income of $803 million, or $1.14 a share, from a loss of $931 million, or $1.44 a share, in the year-ago period. Excluding nonrecurring items, adjusted earnings per share of $1.17, the most since it reported EPS of $1.42 for the third-quarter of 2019, beat the FactSet consensus of $1.00. Revenue jumped 39.9% to $13.19 billion, the highest fourth-quarter revenue in its history, and above the FactSet consensus of $13.07 billion. Load factor improved 3.7 percentage points to 83.9% but was below the FactSet consensus of 84.5%. For the first quarter, the company expects approximately breakeven results on an adjusted basis, compared with the FactSet EPS consensus of 1 cents. The stock has rallied 16.1% over the past three months through Wednesday while the U.S. Global Jets ETF JETS has run up 18.5% and the S&P 500 SPX has gained 4.9%.
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