Flight Centre revealed on Thursday that its half-year profits after tax plunged 74 per cent, from $85 million to just $22.1 million.
The travel group also cut its full-year profit guidance by 22 per cent, to between $240 million and $300 million, which it blamed on the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.
Its shares have been trading 20 per cent lower since the start of 2020.
Chief executive Graham Turner said, “It is, of course, an evolving situation and we will continue to monitor developments.”
The group blamed a series of global events for the results including Brexit, the US-China trade wars and civil unrest in Hong Kong.
The travel group has cut its interim dividend after delivering the results on Thursday, which cover the second half of 2020.
Underlying profit was 20 per cent lower due to “underperformance” in cost growth, leisure operations and acquisitions, and growth in its online leisure and low-margin foreign exchange businesses.
Its half-year dividend of 40 cents per share was down from 60 cents in the same half of 2020.
Turner said, “Unfortunately, we were unable to fully benefit from this accelerated leisure and corporate [transaction] growth.
“Within our business, we have continued to proactively address internal factors that have impacted profit growth recently and have also initiated strategies to deliver further market share growth and greater efficiency in the future.”
Rob Hall
says:Their first mistake was dropping their popular cruise specialist division “Cruiseabout” & replacing that with
“travel Associates” What a meaningless business name is that. They now seem to be closing some of those
offices, with their better sales operators now working from home. What does that situation say to regular and
experienced cruise customers? Go figure!