Monarch Group announces deep cut in pre-tax losses
Monarch Group claims to have made "substantial progress" towards its target of restoring the company to overall profitability by October after reducing its pre-tax loss for the last financial year by 71% to £14.9 million.
Executive chairman Iain Rawlinson said the Group had made a "satisfactory" start to the current financial year, to April 30, with good growth in passengers, yields and revenues.
He said its tour operations, including Cosmos, Avro and bed bank somewhere2stay, had exceeded its targets.
"There is a growing customer awareness and appreciation for our core proposition across our divisions of superior experience at a competitive price," added Rawlinson.
"Together with the 8.9% increase in Group revenues confirmed today for the 2012 financial year, and the success of the on-going cost-reduction improvements, this performance underlines the substantial progress we are making towards our target of restoring the Group to overall profitability by November 2013."
The Group achieved £31.6 million of operational cost savings in the year to October 31 2012.
The Group’s tour operations saw a 15% rise in revenue for the first half of the year to £75.5 million following a 14.6% rise in passengers to 188,000. The company said the implementation of its new TravelBox bookings system had enhanced its online offering and customer experience.
It saw a 13.6% increase in unique visitors to its website to 9.8 million during the first half of the year, following on from a 21% increase to over 20 million for the year ended October 2012.
Monarch Airlines revenues for the first half of the year were up 10% to £206.4 million following a 7% rise in passengers to 1.9 million and a 42% rise in ancillary seat revenue.
Rawlinson added: "As at the beginning of June 2013, bookings for the key departure months of July and August are advancing well with both the Airline and Tour Operations Divisions ahead of last year in load factors and yields for the summer season.
"We have appropriate levels of capacity and high-quality inventory at competitive prices available, and we are satisfactorily positioned to meet the requirements of our customers during the peak summer trading period."
However, he said trading conditions remained challenging due to the economic outlook in the UK. "Our performance expectations for the market for the remaining part of this year and next are accordingly conservative."
Linsey McNeill
Editor Linsey McNeill has been writing about travel for more than three decades. Bylines include The Times, Telegraph, Observer, Guardian and Which? plus the South China Morning Post. She also shares insider tips on thetraveljournalist.co.uk
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