Shares of American Airlines Group Inc. rose 0.8% in premarket trading Thursday, after the air carrier reported a narrower-than-expected third-quarter loss on revenue that nearly tripled, while load factor came up short. The air carrier swung to net income of $169 million, or 25 cents a share, from a loss of $2.40 billion, or $4.71 a share, in the year-ago period. Excluding nonrecurring items, which would include benefits from government payroll support programs, the adjusted per-share loss came to 99 cents, beating the FactSet loss consensus of $1.04. Total revenue grew 182.7% to $8.97 billion, above the FactSet consensus of $8.92 billion, as passenger revenue jumped 213.3% to $7.96 billion. Load factor improved to 78.7% from 58.9% but missed the FactSet consensus of 80.9%. The company said it ended the quarter with about $18 billion of available liquidity. The company said it expects fourth-quarter revenue to be down about 20% from the same period in 2019, while the current FactSet revenue consensus of $9.30 billion implies a 17.8% decline. The stock has dropped 8.8% over the past three months through Wednesday, while the U.S. Global Jets ETF has slipped 1.8% and the S&P 500 has gained 4.1%.
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