LATAM Airlines' (LTM) Traffic & Load Factor Increase In July

LATAM Airlines Group (NYSE:LTM) reported impressive traffic figures for July, wherein load factor (% of seats filled by passengers) improved as traffic growth was more than capacity expansion in the month.

Consolidated traffic (measured in revenue passenger kilometers or RPKs) came in at 11.13 billion, up 3.9% from the year-ago figure. On a year-over-year basis, consolidated capacity (or available seat miles/ASMs) rose 3.4% to 13.18 billion.

Moreover, consolidated load factor improved to 84.5% from 84% a year ago. Passenger count climbed 7.8% to 6.7 million.

In the first seven months of 2019, LATAM Airlines, which competes with the likes of GOL Linhas (NYSE:GOL) , Azul (NYSE:AZUL) and Copa Holdings (NYSE:CPA) in the Latin American aviation space, generated RPKs of 72.13 billion (up 5.8% year over year) and ASMs of 86 billion (up 5.4% year over year). Load factor registered an increase of 0.3 percentage points year over year to 83.9%. Passenger count at LATAM Airlines increased 7.2% on a year-to-date basis.

Notably, LATAM Airlines is being aided by an increase in passenger revenues lately. In the second quarter of 2019, passenger revenues, which accounted for 85.2% of the top line, improved 3.2% year over year. The metric was driven by a 4.8% capacity expansion in the quarter.

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