Greece's Aegean Airlines lifts profit, raises dividend

ATHENS (Reuters) - Aegean Airlines <AGNr.AT> increased full-year net earnings by 87 percent on an improved load factor and higher sales in a strong tourism year, Greece's largest carrier said on Thursday.

Aegean, a member of the Star Alliance airline group, said net profit jumped to 60.4 million euros ($74.46 million) last year from 32.2 million in 2016.

The airline grew sales revenue by 11 percent to 1.127 billion euros, improving its load factor to 83.2 percent from 77.4 percent a year earlier.

"The achievement of an 83 percent load factor, given the seasonality of demand in Greece and rising competition, shows our maturing capacity in managing our route network and ticket pricing," said Chief Executive Dimitris Gerogiannis.

Aegean's board will propose a dividend per share of 0.55 euros for 2017, up from a payout of 0.40 euros for 2016.

The airline said it flew a total of 13.2 million passengers, up 6 percent on the previous year, with traffic on international flights performing strongly, up 9 percent year-on-year.

Passenger traffic on flights abroad has almost doubled since 2013, when Aegean acquired Olympic Airlines. That year the two airlines together flew 4.3 million passengers abroad compared to 7.3 million in 2017.

Aegean plans to renew its fleet of mostly Airbus <AIR.PA> narrow body jets and is currently evaluating the new generation Airbus A320neo family and Boeing's <BA.N> 737MAX.

Last week the carrier said it flew 12 percent more passengers in the first two months of this year.

(Reporting by George Georgiopoulos, editing by David Evans)