- Customer Background
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The International Air Transport Association (IATA) announced an expected strengthening of airline industry profitability in an upgrade of its outlook for 2023. With COVID-19 restrictions now removed in all major markets, the industry is expected to reach a high percentage of 2019 levels of revenue passenger miles (kilometers) for the year, with strengthening passenger traffic as the year progresses. That said, competition remains intense as carriers vie for consumer attention.
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- Challenge
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Members of the investor relations (IR) team at this large U.S. airline are responsible for articulating the company's story, financial performance and investment plans to key investors and other stakeholders. This involves looking at the company and its peer groups to report on growth trajectories, changes in market share and the impact of different pricing strategies. Members of the team wanted to improve access to important company and competitor metrics to sharpen their reports and presentations for the executives, investors and others.
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- Pain Point
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Members of the IR team used consensus estimates to analyze their company’s performance, as well as that of their peers. However, they were relying on relationships with individual brokerage firms to access this information and had to comb through each firm's analysis to get the results they needed. They wanted easy access to more comprehensive data to reliably gauge market sentiment and how this might impact stakeholder views of the company and its competitors. In particular, they wanted:
- A standardized database of global, real-time financial forecasting measures, such as upgrades/downgrades, target price revisions and market-moving news.
- Ready information on means, medians, highs and lows for industry-specific metrics.
- The ability to analyze trends material to the airline industry and do a deep dive on evolving market expectations.
The IR team knew that S&P Global Market Intelligence ("Market Intellignece") was well-known for its estimates data and reached out to learn more.
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- The Solution
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Market Intelligence specialists explained that S&P Capital IQ Estimates have been the go-to resource for years for reliable company analysis. They also described the recent global expansion of the dataset that has added 60+ industry-specific operating forecasts across 14 key sectors, including airlines. Available on the S&P Capital IQ Pro desktop platform, this data would give the IR team:
Detailed financial forecasting measures
The S&P Capital IQ Estimates dataset provides comprehensive global estimates based on projections, models, analysis and research from analysts, brokers and the companies themselves. This includes:
- Consensus Estimates: Aggregate analyst estimates for public companies.
- Detail Estimates: Historical and current estimates for specific trading items for companies.
- Company Guidance: A public company's estimates of its own future profit or loss.
- Analyst Coverage: Estimates of public companies at any point in time provided by brokers and analysts.
- Consensus Analysis: Estimated growth rates and estimate surprise calculations.
- Estimate Revisions: Upward and downward changes of broker estimates.
Important airline-specific details
The global expansion of the S&P Capital IQ Estimates dataset has added over 60 industry-specific operating forecasts across 14 key sectors. This provides access to means, medians, high, low, number of estimates and standard deviations for 140+ industry-specific metrics.
The Airline Estimates component of the dataset includes:
- Available seat miles.
- Passenger revenue.
- Revenue passenger miles.
- Load factor.
- Total fuel expense.
A robust desktop solution for data access and analysis
The S&P Capital IQ Pro platform provides access to an unrivaled breadth and depth of data, tech-forward productivity tools and news and research. Users can choose from a multitude of widgets and templates to create a custom dashboard and utilize mapping tools and presentation-ready graphics to showcase their findings. In addition, a global support team is available for around-the-clock assistance on every aspect of the platform.
Explore some of the datasets mentioned in this case study.
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