RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Brazilian airline Azul reduced its losses by 53% from 10.422 billion reais (about US$2.051 billion) in 2020 to 4.767 billion (US$938.5 million) during the 2021 fiscal year. Regarding its annual revenues, the company revealed a 72% growth to 9.975 billion reais (about US$1.963 billion).
During the fourth quarter, Azul demonstrated the competitive and sustainable advantages of its business model by achieving “the highest revenues” in its history, it said. Thus, in the period, operating revenues reached a record 3.7 billion, more than double the 2020 quarter and 14.7% higher than in the same period of 2019.
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“Azul was one of very few airlines worldwide exceed pre-pandemic revenues as early as 2021,” the company said in a statement.
“Our competitive advantages led by our unique network and diversified fleet resulted in record revenue, at an RASK of 39.46 cents, 18% above the same period of 2019 and 42.7% above the fourth quarter of 2020,” said John Rodgerson, CEO of Azul.
Along with this, he highlighted that its logistics business continued to perform well, marking a “record” year and exceeding the ambitious target of doubling revenues for the full year in 2021 compared to 2019.
As such, revenue for the year reached 1.1 billion (about US$216 million), 128.0% higher than 2019 revenue of 480.7 million (about US$94 million).
Its Ebit and Ebitda were the highest since the beginning of the pandemic. In this second indicator alone, in the fourth quarter, it reached more than 1 billion reais (about US$197 million), representing a margin of 27.5%.
Regarding its liquidity, it reached 4.1 billion reais (about US$807 million), an increase of 40.6% compared to the same period of 2019 and more than 600 million above its guidance, “mainly due to improvements in reserve trends.”
In that regard, the CEO noted that “during the quarter, we continued to focus on our domestic network. We are now flying to nearly 150 destinations, a notable addition of more than 30 destinations compared to 2019. Over time, the growth of these new destinations will contribute significant incremental demand to our network,” he noted.
Finally, Rodgerson cautioned that while the company is experiencing “some challenges” in the near term from Omicron. During the first quarter of 2022, “we are very focused on executing our 2022 business plan, with the full recovery of corporate and international demand still to come,” he said.