Thursday July 30, 12:37 PM
Lufthansa posts weak results but vows to act
FRANKFURT (AFP) - Germany's leading airline, Lufthansa (Xetra: 823212 - news) , reported disappointing results Thursday in response to a global travel slump and pledged to cut costs sharply.
The latest figures made the carrier's full-year target of an operating profit harder to reach but it nonetheless maintained the forecast.
"I am doubtful about a rapid and sustained rebound" of the global economy and thus the air transport sector too, Lufthansa finance director Stephan Gemkow told a telephone news conference.
An increase in average revenue per passenger was also "not foreseeable," he added, though Lufthansa planned to cut passenger capacity by 1.8 percent this year.
The airline made a net profit of 40 million euros (56 million dollars) in the second quarter of 2009, down 88.1 percent from a year earlier but much better than analyst forecasts for a loss of 18 million euros.
Sales tumbled 19.4 percent to 5.2 billion euros, while operating profit came to 52 million euros, down almost 90 percent, a statement said.
Like major competitors, Lufthansa has suffered a sharp drop in the number of passengers willing to pay for first-class and business-class travel.
In the six months from January to June it carried nearly 32.2 million people, 4.8 percent less than in the same period a year earlier.
First-half sales lost 15.7 percent and the airline showed a net loss of 216 million euros, even as it eked out an operating profit of eight million euros and pledged to cut passenger division costs by one billion euros by 2012.
"The figures speak for themselves. Crises ruthlessly reveal the weak points and we shall act," chief executive Wolfgang Mayrhuber said in the statement.
Lufthansa's freight division suffered as well, with a 20 percent drop in first-half traffic to 788,000 tonnes. The airline has cut freight capacity by 30 percent.
On top of the drop in traffic, Lufthansa has faced volatile fuel prices, and Gemkow said it expected to buy 3.4 billion euros' worth of fuel this year, down from 5.4 billion in 2008.
The airline forecast a significant drop in 2009 revenues but maintained its target of an operating profit for the full year.
It has announced a programme to cut costs that will include the elimination of around 400 administrative posts in its passenger division.
Investments would be trimmed by 500 million euros to 2.6 billion this year as well, Gemkow said.
But Lufthansa was pushing ahead with its acquisition of the British airline BMI, and was in talks with the Scandianavian carrier SAS (Stockholm: SAS.ST - news) to buy the 20 percent stake it owns in BMI, he added.
Finally, the finance director estimated that Lufthansa would wrap up its purchase of Austrian Airlines (Vienna: 675054.VI - news) by September 14 and said talks with the European Commission over that deal had been completed, without providing details.
Lufthansa shares gained a slight 0.26 percent to 9.47 euros in midday trading on the Frankfurt stock exchange, while the DAX index (Xetra: news) on which they are listed was 0.52 percent higher.
|
|
|
Send Article by Email
Send Article by IM
Blog This with Y! 360
Printable View
