Budget carrier Air Arabia, the UAE’s only publicly-listed airline, reported a 26% rise in third-quarter net profit yesterday.
The Sharjah-based firm made a net profit of 297mn dirhams ($80.9mn) in the three months to September 30, the company said in a statement. This compares with a profit of 235mn dirhams in the corresponding period of 2015.
EFG Hermes and SICO Bahrain had forecast the airline would make a third-quarter profit of 294.5mn dirhams and 209.4mn dirhams respectively.
Air Arabia, which had reported declining profits in four of the preceding five quarters, carried more than 2.27mn passengers in the third quarter of 2016, an increase of 14% year on year.
The airline’s third-quarter revenue was 1.12bn dirhams, “in line” with the revenue generated in the same period a year earlier, it said without elaborating.

Aluminium Bahrain
Aluminium Bahrain (Alba), owner of one of the world’s largest aluminium smelters, reported a 65.1% rise in third-quarter net profit yesterday.
Net income for the three months to the end of September was 14.3mn dinars ($38.0mn), it said in a statement, up from 8.7mn dinars in the third quarter of 2015.
“Alba was able to raise net income on the back of a solid operational performance despite a relatively weak physical premium environment,” said chief executive Tim Murray.
SICO Bahrain had forecast Alba would make a net profit of 16.9mn dinars
The company also said it expected to finalise the export credit agency financing for its Line 6 expansion by the first quarter of 2017.
Alba will become the world’s largest single aluminium smelter complex, boosting its annual output by 540,000 tonnes to 1.5mn tonnes per year by adding a sixth “potline”, used in producing the metal from raw materials such as bauxite.
Last month it said it had closed a $1.5bn loan with regional and international banks that will fund the Line 6 expansion.

Al Baraka Banking
Al Baraka Banking Group, the Bahraini Islamic lender with operations in more than a dozen countries, reported a 3.75% fall in third-quarter net profit yesterday as it set aside more cash to cover bad loans.
The bank made a net attributable profit of $35.04mn in the three months ending September 30, it said in a statement.
This compares with a profit of $36.40mn in the corresponding period of 2015, according to the statement.
Higher net provisioning, which jumped to $39.16mn from $11.04mn in the same period a year earlier, put pressure on the bank’s earnings.
For the first nine months of the year, the bank said it had raised its general provisioning as a precautionary measure due to the economic and financial conditions in some countries it operated as well as global uncertainty.