Benzinga | Jul 22, 2021 09:16AM EDT

American Airlines Beats Q2 Estimates, Clocks Daily Cash Build Rate Of $1M, Expects 20% Dip In Q3 Revenue Compared To 3Q19

* American Airlines Group Inc (NASDAQ:AAL) reported second-quarter revenue of $7.49 billion, a sequential growth of 87% (compared to $1.62 billion in 2Q20), beating the consensus of $7.14 billion.

* Adjusted earnings per share loss narrowed to $(1.69) compared to $(7.82) in 2Q20, beating the consensus of $(2.41).

* Operating income of $441 million, compared to operating loss of $2.49 billion in 2Q20.

* For the quarter company recorded Revenue passenger miles of 42.02 billion (7.23 billion in 2Q20), Available seat miles of 54.55 billion (17.08 billion), Total revenues per ASM of 13.71c (9.50c), and Passenger load factor was 77% (up 3,470 bps compared to 43.3% in 2Q20)

* The company has ~$21.3 billion of total available liquidity at the end of the quarter and expects to reduce its debt by ~$15 billion by 2025.

* American Airlines reported a cash build rate of ~$1 million per day and announced prepaying of $950 million spare parts term loan scheduled to mature in April 2023.

* Outlook Q3: American Airlines expects capacity to be down approximately 15% to 20% compared to the third quarter of 2019, and revenue to be down about 20% versus the third quarter of 2019.

* AAL said on the conference call that it expects full business travel recovery in 2022, and it has not seen degradation in bookings due to an uptick in COVID-19 cases.

* Price action: AAL shares traded lower by 1.59% at $21.06 in the premarket session on the last check Thursday.

* Photo by Russell Lee (Aero Pixels) via Wikimedia