Copa Holdings (CPA) Traffic, Load Factor Rise In April

Latin American carrier Copa Holdings, S.A. (NYSE:CPA) reported impressive traffic data for the month of April 2017. Traffic – measured in revenue passenger miles (RPMs) – came in at 1.55 billion, up 16.5% on a year-over-year basis.

Also, consolidated capacity (or available seat miles/ASMs) rose 6.3% to 1.86 billion on a year-over-year basis. Meanwhile, the load factor or percentage of seats filled by passengers climbed 730 basis points (bps) to 83.4% in Apr 2017 as traffic growth exceeded capacity expansion.

In the first four months of 2017, Copa Holdings generated RPMs of 6.28 billion (up 11.4% year over year) and ASMs of 7.67 billion (up 4.8%). Load factor registered growth of 490 bps year over year to 81.9%, during the period.

In fact, the impressive traffic report provides some relief to Copa Holdings. This is because the stock has suffered over the last few trading sessions particularly on Thursday due to the political scandal in Brazil relating to its President Michel Temer. Not only did the Copa Holdings stock plummet, its peers in the Latin American aviation space like GOL Linhas (NYSE:GOL) also suffered due to the event.

Despite the above sell-off, we note that the Copa Holdings stock has performed impressively so far this year. Evidently, shares of the company have rallied 19.2% on a year-to-date basis compared with the Zacks categorized Transportation-Airline industry’s gain of 7.9%.

Zacks Rank & Stocks to Consider

Copa Holdings currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Better-ranked stocks in the airline space include Deutsche Lufthansa (OTC:DLAKY) and Ryanair Holdings (NASDAQ:RYAAY) sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Shares of Lufthansa and Ryanair have gained approximately 41% and 21%, respectively, on a year-to-date basis.

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