Shares of United Airlines Holdings (UAL) rose in after-hours trading after the airline company reported better-than-expected fourth-quarter results. United reported adjusted earnings of $2.00 compared to estimates of $1.69. Revenue was $13.63 billion compared to Wall Street expectations of $13.54 billion. United also issued first quarter guidance that fell short of analyst estimates, warning that the grounding of the Boeing (BA) 737 Max 9 will have an impact on results. Yahoo Finance's Julie Hyman and Josh Lipton discuss the results.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Editor's note: This article was written by Stephanie Mikulich

Video Transcript

- We are watching shares of United Airlines. The stock is up even though the company's forecast for the first quarter loss is much worse than anticipated. So we should say, first of all, fourth quarter earnings beat estimates coming in at $2 a share.

Analysts had been predicting a $1.69. But the company says because of the costs associated with what's been going on with some of its 737s, the idea that some of those planes are still grounded here that the company's first quarter adjusted loss per share is going to be $0.35 to $0.85.

Analysts had been predicting a loss of $0.21. So in other words, the loss even in a best case scenario is going to be worse than analysts had been predicting. But the shares were up.

And one has to think maybe that's because some of this was priced in already or expected.

- Yeah, I mean, that stock was beaten down heading into that print. I mean, it was down about 7% year to date heading into the print. It was down more than 20% over the past 12 months.

So you wonder how much of that might have been pressed in. It's an initial nice pop in the after hours move. But certainly, a lot of questions here about the max nine.

There was also-- there were reports today, by the way, of the CEO Scott Kirby and how unhappy he is his frustration over the quality lapses at Boeing. That's not great news for Boeing.

When one of the biggest customers is that unhappy, kind of-- I know it's a great question. For guests, we have coming up. What does that mean for Boeing, too?

- Yeah, I mean, that report just hitting just a few minutes before like 10 minutes before the bell or so. That there was that dissatisfaction.

A couple of the other headlines I'm seeing, by the way, if you're looking at the full-year outlook here, the full-year adjusted earnings per share outlook is $9 to $11. The estimate there was $9.45 So that might be another kind of silver lining that people are looking at.

And United Airlines is also saying that its cost per available seat mile will be up in the mid single digits in the first quarter. So that may be something also that analysts, investors are sort of holding on to here.

- All right, we've got a very smart analyst coming up. Help us make sense of it.

-We do. Yeah.