SINGAPORE Airlines (SIA) : C6L 0% on Tuesday (Nov 7) posted 55.4-per-cent-higher net profit of S$1.4 billion for the first six months of its financial year ended Sep 30, from S$926.9 million a year earlier.

This comes on the back of an 8.9 per cent rise in revenue over the same period to S$9.2 billion, from S$8.4 billion last year.

The higher net profit came amid a 15.3 per cent year-on-year fall in net fuel costs to S$2.3 billion for the half-year period.

Earnings per share for the period stood at S$0.312, up from S$0.144 a year earlier.

SIA also declared an interim dividend of S$0.10 per share for the half year, equivalent to that paid out a year earlier. Shareholders who own shares in the company as at 5 pm on Dec 7, 2023 will be entitled to receive the interim dividend on Dec 22, 2023.

On Tuesday, the company also announced that it intends to redeem half the remaining mandatory convertible bonds (MCBs) that were issued in June 2021.

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It noted that the accreted principal amount payable stood at S$1.7 billion, or 110.4 per cent of the principal amount of the MCBs. The redemption will be carried out on a pro-rata basis, and be paid out to eligible bondholders on Dec 26, 2023.

After the redemption, SIA will have redeemed a total of 75 per cent of the June 2021 MCBs.

In its first-half results, the carrier attributed its improved performance to robust demand for air travel into the northern summer travel season, with a rebound in passenger traffic to fully reopened markets such as China, Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan.

It added that SIA and Scoot carried 17.4 million passengers in the six months up to Sep 30, up 52.3 per cent year on year. Over the same period, passenger traffic grew 38 per cent from a year earlier, outpacing capacity expansion of 29 per cent.

“As a result, the group passenger load factor (PLF) improved by 5.8 percentage points to 88.8 per cent, the highest ever half-yearly PLF,” it said.

Still, it attributed soft air freight demand to inventory overhang as well as geopolitical and macroeconomic headwinds.

While cargo load factor dipped 8.4 percentage points to 52.7 per cent year on year, cargo yields stood at 41.8 cents per load tonne-kilometre, 37 per cent above pre-pandemic levels.

For the rest of the year, SIA expects its capacity to reach an average of around 92 per cent of pre-pandemic levels in December 2023, before returning to pre-Covid capacity within FY2025 with the progressive ramp-up of services across its network.

Shares of SIA closed 1.4 per cent or S$0.09 lower at S$6.24 on Tuesday, before the results were released.