Southwest Airlines Co. (NYSE: LUV) was recently called a grossly oversold stock by us as a turnaround stock price where the fundamentals of the business were not going in the same direction as the share price. The fundamentals have remained strong during a period where airline stocks were being pounded.
News is out this morning that its November traffic results for its legacy operations and its AirTran operations, which is now more than six months into the merger completion. The company flew 8.3 billion revenue passenger miles in November 2011 versus 8.1 billion a year earlier. The load factor for November 2011 was 81.6% versus 80.2% a year earlier.
These results are combined results of the two airlines so that the data may remain comparable, and the results are based upon 0.3% fewer trips flown.
Total load factor was up 1.4 points for the month and up 1.3 points for all of 2011 so far.
Shares are indicated up almost 1% at $8.54 right before the open. As a reminder, Southwest is profitable, has a better safety record than peers, has better labor relations than its peers, is expected to remain profitable ahead, and it even pays a tiny dividend to allow dividend funds to own the stock.
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