| ||
| ||
| ||
| ||
 |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Qantas down after profit warning
By Geoff Hiscock, CNN Asia Business Editor
SYDNEY, Australia (CNN) -- Australian flag-carrier Qantas Airways has again downgraded its 2002-03 profit outlook because of SARS, prompting investors to dump its shares Wednesday. The stock closed 5 percent lower at Aust. $3.04, within sight of its one-year low of A$2.84 posted on April 28. It is now down 20 percent for the year. Across the Tasman Sea, Air New Zealand shares fared almost as badly, tumbling 4.44 percent to NZ$0.43. Another of the region's leading carriers, Cathay Pacific, is down about 1 percent in Hong Kong after announcing on Monday it would save $120 million by halving its 2002 dividend. Qantas said Wednesday the continued impact of the SARS virus had forced it to further downgrade its earnings outlook for the year to June 30. But it declined to be any more specific about profit numbers. Qantas said all its international routes had been affected by the deadly SARS illness, with bookings to Hong Kong down 64 percent and to Japan down 30 percent. So far, SARS has claimed at least 475 lives, with the majority of those deaths in China (214) and Hong Kong (193). Worldwide, there are an estimated 6,721 probable cases of SARS, with the World Health Organization warning that for China the worst may be yet to come. (Full story) "We now only operate seven of the 30 services per week we planned to operate to Hong Kong before the war in Iraq and the outbreak of SARS, " Qantas CEO Geoff Dixon said Wednesday. He said that more recently, there had been a sharp downturn in passenger bookings from Europe, while forward bookings to the UK were down about 14 percent. Qantas, which is held 17 percent by British Airways, posted a first-half profit of Aust. $352.5 million ($208 million) in February and said then that it was on track to meet its full-year target. But it warned in late March and again in early April that first Iraq and later SARS could affect its earnings. On April 9, Dixon said Qantas would cut 1,400 jobs by June 30 and convert another 300 jobs from full-time to part-time. Qantas, one of the world's most profitable carriers, posted earnings of A$428 million ($234 million) in the year to June 2002. Analysts expected it to earn about A$600 million in the 2002-03 year, but Qantas has now issued two profit downgrades in the past six weeks. Dixon said Wednesday that Qantas was looking at further cost-cutting measures. These included greater use of accumulated leave to reduce staffing numbers, increased redundancies, more part-time workers and an expanded leave-without-pay program. He said Qantas would also cut capital spending by retiring some aircraft and deferring delivery of some new planes. Separately, the Qantas low-cost subsidiary Australian Airlines said it would start flying to Bali next month, with a weekly Sydney-Melbourne-Denpasar service from June 27. Sydney-Bali-Singapore flights will start on July 25, the airline said.
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
