Virgin Australia reports $47.8m after-tax loss, a $27m improvement; Webjet profit stable at 9.1m after tax.
The half yearly results reporting season has seen both Virgin Australia and Webjet report their figures for the six months to 31 December this morning.
Virgin Australia‘s headline figure was was an “underlying profit before tax” of $10.2 million, a turnaround from the previous corresponding period’s underlying figure which was a $45.4 million loss. Revenue was up 6% to $2.38 billion
CEO John Borghetti said the figures reflect a significant improvement in financial performance, and had been driven by the group’s continued progress in driving yield growth in the domestic market, as well as the “disciplined execution of our five-year $1 billion cost reduction program”.
VA’s international business, which lost $49.5 million during the half, had been impacted by strong competition, with a range of initiatives planned to address this including adjusting frequency and timing on Bali services to better match demand. Domestic yield increased 3%, driven by Virgin Australia’s success in attracting a larger share of higher-yielding market segments.
During the period Virgin saw a $3m benefit from the decline in oil prices, and Tigerair Australia improved its performance “achieving profitability in the second quarter of the 2015 financial year”. However VA’s share of TT’s equity-accounted losses for the period up to its $1 acquisition of the remaining 40% of the business in October amounted to $15.8 million.
Webjet‘s TTV surged 22.2% to $620 million during the half, with revenue up 11.5% to $58.2 million. Pre-tax earnings amounted to $12.1 million, up 7% and net profit after tax was stable at $9.1 million.
Underlying EBITDA, adjusted for $1 million in one-off costs associated with the acquisition of SunHotels and a $1.4m gain on the sale of a controlling stake in Webjet Marketing USA in the previous corresponding period, increased 41.3% during the period.
“This stellar result is due to the strong performance of both the core Webjet business and the growing B2B division,” said md John Guscic.
“Since completion of the IT transformation in April 2014, the Webjet business has been able to deliver more attractive consumer offerings for our customers. As a result, Webjet has seen record TTV each month since July,” he said.
“We continue to grow materially faster than the market,” Guscic added.
More information in today’s issue of Travel Daily.