By Gabriel Araujo

SAO PAULO, Brazil (Reuters) – Brazilian airline Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes SA reported Thursday a higher-than-expected quarter of net income. This was due to currency gains that offset rising fuel prices. Its shares rose.

According to the company, operating results have been the most impressive since the outbreak of COVID-19. Quarterly sales were higher than the level seen prior to the crisis.

Gol shares were at 15.08 R$ in the midafternoon. This was 2.6% higher than Brazil’s stock market, which was only 0.4%.

Gol reported quarterly net profits of 2.6 billion Brazilian reais ($523.8m), which is a significant improvement on the 394.8 million real consensus of analysts polled at Refinitiv. This reverses the multibillion dollar losses suffered in the prior quarter and last year.

Gol stated that the bottom line was driven primarily by foreign currency gains. In particular, Brazil’s real strengthened strongly against the U.S. Dollar during the period.

Preliminary traffic data from the first quarter were released by the company earlier in this month. They noted that their load factor increased about 1 percentage points over last year. About 44% of the available seat kilometers (ASK grew) were added.

Guide Investimentos’ analysts stated that Gol’s operational figures are positive, and represent a substantial improvement despite macroeconomic pressures such as high Brazilinflation and fuel prices.

They added that “Despite this, we remain cautious about the sector and may face similar hurdles”

Gol’s quarterly net revenues more than doubled from year to year, reaching 3.2 billion Rias. This beats the Refinitiv prediction of 2.92 Billion Rias.

Paulo Kakinoff, Chief Executive Officer of Air France said that “our ability to emerge from the most severe crises of airline history as a stronger company with strong results was a testament our flexible business model.”

($1 = 4.9642 reais)