KUALA LUMPUR (Feb 17): AirAsia X Bhd (AAX) saw its passenger size for the fourth quarter (4Q14) grow 11.7% to 1.09 million passengers from 973,285 last year. 

For 4Q14, AAX's (fundamental: 0; valuation: 0.3) passenger traffic grew 9.3% y-o-y, against 8.5% y-o-y increase in Available-Seat-KM (ASK) capacity, the company said in a statement today.

Its 4Q14 revenue passenger kilometres (RPK) - which is the number of paying passengers carried on scheduled flights multiplied by the number of kilometers those seats were flown - also improved, growing by 9.3% to 5.31 million from 4.86 million.

Consequently, AAX said its load factor improved by 0.5 percentage points to 81.4%, implying capacity injected during the peak quarter was well absorbed by demand arising from year-end holiday travel.

For the full year, its passenger size grew by 33.8% y-o-y or 1.1 million passengers to 4.23 million passengers in financial year 2014 (FY14) from 3.16 million in financial year 2013 (FY13). Its RPK for the full year was at 20.82 million, up 31.3% from 15.86 million in FY13.

AAX attributed the improved operating statistics to stronger branding, enhanced customer experience and larger capacity at klia2. 

"Capacity as measured by Available-Seat-KM (ASK) increased by 31.4% y-o-y, with the introduction of new routes - Nagoya, Xian, and Narita in 2014. Load factor for the full year remained healthy at 82% despite challenging market conditions," AAX added. 

During 4Q14, AAX said it had also taken delivery of two A330-300 on operating lease, bringing its total number of A330-300s to 23 aircraft, together with two A340-300s (expected to be returned early second quarter of 2015) and one A330-200 (expected to be returned by the first quarter of this year). 

AAX said its fleet size has expanded to 26 aircraft from 19 in the same period last year.
 
On its associates, AAX said Thai AirAsia X registered a strong load of 84.4% for its 4Q14, with 159,034 passengers carried, "showing faster-than-expected pick-up for the popular routes between Thailand, Japan, and South Korea". 

"Thai AirAsia X launched its inaugural flights to Incheon in July 2014, Osaka, Narita in September 2014, and recently added Sapporo as its third destination in Japan," it noted. 

While Indonesia AirAsia X, it added, was set to start flying four times weekly from Denpasar to Taipei in March.

Shares of AAX was trading at 62.5 sen at midday break, up half a sen or 0.81%. At the current price, AAX has a market capitalisation of RM1.47 billion. 
 
(Note: The Edge Research's fundamental score reflects a company's profitability and balance sheet strength, calculated based on historical numbers. The valuation score determines if a stock is attractively valued or not, also based on historical numbers. A score of 3 suggests strong fundamentals and attractive valuations.)