Shares of aviation stocks Jet Airways, SpiceJet and IndiGo-owner Interglobe Aviation closed with marginal losses on Monday, ahead of the March quarter results to be reported by Jet and SpiceJet.
Jet Airways ended 1.65 percent lower at Rs 474 while budget carrier SpiceJet closed at 102, down 0.39 percent, on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). Interglobe Aviation lost 1.27 percent to close at Rs 1,077 while the BSE Sensex ended 81 points higher at 31,109.
Jet Airways will be announcing its Q4 results on Tuesday (May 30) and SpiceJet, on June 3.
Etihad Airways, the Abu Dhabi-based carrier that has 24 percent stake in Jet Airways, was in the news recently for its $379 million investment in the Indian carrier turning out to be a bad one.
Interglobe Aviation had reported weak results for the quarter a few days ago. Net profit dropped 25 percent to Rs 440 crore in comparison to Rs 584 crore in the year-ago period. The fall in net profit was mainly due to 71 percent rise in fuel costs to Rs 1,750 crore for Q4 as against Rs 1,024 crore in the corresponding period last year.
Interglobe's Income grew 18.5 percent to Rs 4,848 crore from Rs 4,090 crore for the corresponding period last year. The company declared dividend of Rs 34 per share for the financial year 2016-17.
IndiGo is the largest carrier in terms of passengers carried, followed by Jet Airways, state-run Air India and SpiceJet.
Overall, 12 carriers flew 91.34 lakh (9.13 million) passengers during the month, up 15.15 percent from 79.32 lakh (7.93 million) flown in April last year and higher from 9.04 million passengers in March this year.
Other carriers include AirAsia India, Vistara, GoAir and Zoom Air.
Last weekend, finance minister Arun Jaitley had argued in favour of privatising loss-making Air India that has a share of around 14 percent in the domestic air traffic market. "If 86% of flying can be handled by private sector, so it can also handle 100%," Jaitley told state-run broadcast Doordarshan News.
Air India had reported operating profit of Rs 105 crore on total revenues of Rs 20,526 crore for the financial year 2016-17.
SpiceJet has a market share of about 13 percent in domestic air traffic.
