Singapore Airlines (C6L.SG) off 0.4% at $16.14, coming off brief spell in positive territory; limited market reaction to September operating data, released Friday, which show passenger load factor down 0.6 percentage point on-year, with passengers carried down 1.1%, capacity by available seat kilometres +1.3% on year, says Dow jones.

Sequentially, numbers show slight recovery from August when passenger load factor was 78.1%, passengers carried fell 6.6%. September overall load factor at 69.9% vs 70.3% year ago, 68.1% in August. 

 

Citigroup, which has Buy rating, $16.00 target price, says "SIA strategy appears to be to emphasize improving yields and remain conservative on capacity addition to reduce breakeven loads." 

 

Adds, “we should expect a seasonal pick-up in traffic as we head towards the end of the calendar year but we also need to monitor the impact of SIA’s fare increases from October 2010.” 

 

Notes, SIA trading on trailing P/B of 1.40X, 23% discount to STI P/B of 1.82X. Volume not heavy; order book quotes suggest $16.00 as strong support.