Alaska Air Group posts Q1 beat coming off of Boeing incident

Shares of Alaska Air Group (ALK) are trading higher in Thursday's pre-market session — carrying gains into the market open — after the company reported first-quarter earnings that beat analyst expectations and raised its full-year profit forecast. The better-than-expected results come despite challenges the airline faced earlier in the year, including safety incidents involving Boeing's (BA) 737 Max aircraft in January.

Yahoo Finance's Seana Smith and Brad Smith break down the details.

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This post was written by Angel Smith

Video transcript

SEANA SMITH: Let's take a look at Alaska Air, because of reporting a narrower loss than expected for the first quarter, also raising its full year profit forecast as it looks to bounce back following an incident back in January where a fuselage panel blew off one of its planes shortly after takeoff, leading to the temporary grounding of Boeing 737 Max 9, and really the first to the latest of what has been a number of issues here for Boeing over the last several months.

But when it comes to Alaska Air, at least the move that we're seeing to the upside here in shares a bit of a relief here for investors in terms of some of the reaction that we're seeing from the Street here. Early reaction to these results. Citi's Stephen Trent, friend of the show, he was on with us not too long ago, saying that Alaska Air is well positioned post pandemic, thanks to strong revenue diversification, including premium cabin offerings, and a robust co-branded card remuneration. So really, just pointing to the fact that even though there are some concerns, at least in the immediate or really short term here, he thinks they remain well positioned here for the longer term to really capture some of that growth that's continued and expected here in the coming quarters.

BRAD SMITH: Yeah, they kind of, within this report, had to provide a grounding impact assessment as well as excluding grounding impact. And I think that's exactly the story here for Alaska Airlines right now. A company that is so heavily impacted by what took place with that fuselage and the door plug blowing out. And in the mindset of consumers, for many of the people, especially within an environment where year over year, we're already seeing a rise in the number of travelers compared to 2023, where Alaska Airlines is going to have to really work hard in order to retain or bring back a lot of those potential passengers too.