Austrian Airlines beat all forecasts on Friday with a 53.5-percent jump in 2003 operating profit, citing a market recovery, a sales campaign, costs cuts and favourable currencies.
The Austrian national flag carrier posted preliminary earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) of 63.4 million euros ($80.6 million) compared with 41.1 million a year earlier.
Analysts at four banks covering the airline had forecast median full-year EBIT of 15.1 million euros. The carrier raised its forecast in December to 15 million euros from breakeven.
Analysts said most of the gains came from the falling dollar/euro exchange rate, which cut the cost of Austrian's debt pile of over two billion euros.
"It is mainly gains from foreign currency exchange rates," said analyst Stefan Maxian from Raiffeisen Centrobank.
"About 30 percent of their debt is in dollars, and since the dollar (against the euro) trend was very good, it probably had a larger effect than was expected," Maxian told Reuters.
Austrian's shares were up over five percent at 0849 GMT to 10.99 euros, a 52-week high, while the broader market was barely up. The share has gained about 60 percent this year compared with a 16-percent gain in the Austrian blue chip index ATX.
Austrian cited currency effects among the favourable factors in its release but did not go into details.
Revenues fell 7.5 percent to 2.04 billion euros in a year when the industry suffered from fear of flying due to the Iraq war and the deadly Sars virus outbreak.
"However, due to our innovations and marketing offensives, efficient cost management and readiness to change structures that have been in place for many years in an effort to design a more powerful production base, we have successfully turned around the negative trend," Chief Executive Vagn Soerensen said in a statement.
Profit before tax was 25.7 million euros compared with 4.2 million in 2002. The results are preliminary and Austrian will report final figures for 2003 on April 1.