Panamanian airline COPA Holdings (CPA) reported Q4 earnings after the market closed yesterday and the airline's shares really took off today, because earnings and revenues rose very high. CPA EPS hit $2.26/sh vs prior year Q4 losses of minus $9.44/sh, overall a gain of $95.8 mn vs a loss of $441.1 mn. Slaes hit $601.3 mn, up nearly 13%. Both passengers carried, up 4.5%, and revenue miles, up 11.3% helped the stock fly high and even the passenger revenue per seat mile, a key airline metric, rose a bit. These factors offset the higher price of fuel which rose only 2.6% thanks to active hedging by CPA, well below the revenue growth. CPA booked a balance sheet increase of 19% to $814.7 mn and cut its still heavy debt (typical of airlines) by 9% to $1.12 bn. It has nearly doubled in the past year thanks to 3 quarterly positive surprises.

Last month Copa took delivery of a Boeing 737-800 bringing its fleet to 100 planes and said it will grow sales and profits this year. It also declared a 51 cents/quarter divvie, flat on last year. And all this before it flies to Cuba or gets paid by Venezuela. It is rated 10, the top for airlines, by Thomson Reuters but the analyst consensus is barely over “hold” (20 analysts, all apparently grounded.) CPA gained 6.9% today and is near a 12 mo high at $105.60 at the time of this writing.