Continental Airlines has posted a Q2 FY02 loss of US$139 000 000 or a loss of $2.18 a share.

However, this was only due to exceptional losses of US$164 000 000. Without that, it was a loss of $0.55 a share ($35 000 000), better than the conscensus estimate provided by FirstCall of a loss of $0.76 a share. $96 000 000 was a write down of MD-80, turboprops and aircraft leases. $8 000 000 was to write down a government grant.

Revenues fell 14% to US$2.2 billion. Yields fell 11% and capacity fell 10%. Unit costs fell 2.8%, largely due to fuel costs falling.

"Although that was not enough to offset the losses in April and May, it was an encouraging sign that profitability is achievable in this environment," said Merrill Lynch analyst Michael Linenberg.

CO has US$1.3 billion in cash. "Heavy fare discounting and a sluggish economy are bad enough, but when coupled with the extraordinarily high security costs and the increasing airport 'hassle factor,' we're in a no-win situation," CO's CEO said in a statement.

"We need to more aggressively review every aspect of our operation to ensure our cost structure reflects what our customers are willing to pay for," said CO's CFO.

More information at the Financial Times website and the Yahoo / Reuters website

The above has not been copied and pasted. Please refer to the links above for articles provided by the respected organisations

This report actually beat analysts estimates by a mile, wall street was expecting continental to have an operating loss of 76 cents per share, and CO only had a loss of 55 cents per share. While there is no celebration of making any loss, I am happy that the CO loss will be a lot less (I believe) than the rest of the majors excluding WN

Jeremy