Traffic boost for Air Arabia

Air Arabia rose yesterday after the Middle East's biggest budget airline said passenger traffic in October jumped 22 per cent, compared to the same month last year.

Air Arabia's shares advanced 1.3 per cent to 68 fils on the Dubai Financial Market (DFM).

The company said it handled 458,316 passengers last month. The company also said "average seat load - passengers as a percentage of total seats available - stood at 80 per cent, an increase of 3 per cent when compared to last year".

Air Arabia recently added six new routes: Erbil, Iraq; Ufa and Rostov in Russia; Odessa in Ukraine; Pristina in Kosovo and Astana in Kazakhstan.

"The stock price is considered cheap," said Nabil Farhat, a partner at Al Fajer Securities, an Abu Dhabi brokerage. "It's trading 9.8 times earnings, which is OK."

Meanwhile, Emirates NBD, the country's biggest bank by assets, declined 1 per cent to Dh2.87.

The decline came after the ratings agency Moody's decided to keep its outlook on the country's bank negative, citing continuing issues in the flagging property sector.

"The main drivers of the outlook are asset quality changes, especially for the Dubai-based banks, and low provisioning coverage levels," Moody's Khalid Howladar said in a report published yesterday.

Dubai Islamic Bank, the biggest lender complying with Sharia rules, was unchanged at Dh2.02 each.

The DFM General Index slipped 0.6 per cent to 1,604.73 points, while theAbu Dhabi Securities Exchange General Index was little changed, up 0.06 per cent, to 2,676.40.

halsayegh@thenational.ae