News
Qantas Airways optimistic despite expected US$789.2 million first-half EBIT loss
December 17th 2021
Qantas Airways said it has accelerated the repair of its balance sheet even as it predicted a first-half earnings loss before interest and tax (EBIT) of A$1.1 billion (US$789.2 million) for the airline. Read More » An estimated net debt of A$5.65 billion by the end of December benefitted from an A$802 million land sale in the Sydney suburb of Mascot, adjacent to the international airport, and cash from the group's Qantas Freight and Qantas Loyalty divisions. The sale boosted liquidity at the Australian flag carrier to about A$4.2 billion. A market update yesterday said Qantas was relatively bullish about its future, predicting domestic capacity will be about 117% of pre-COVID levels by the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022 and that international capacity will be back to 60% of 2019 levels. “This has been one of the worst halves of the entire pandemic, where most states had their borders closed and the majority of Australians were in lockdown,” Qantas Group CEO, Alan Joyce, said. “Domestically, our capacity fell to around 30% of pre-COVID levels for several months. Fortunately, the structural changes we made earlier in the pandemic put us in a good position to weather these extremely poor trading conditions while the national vaccination rate reached a point where states started to open back up.” The Omicron variant has affected people’s confidence to take international trips, but Joyce said it had not resulted in big numbers of cancellations. The Qantas Group CEO’s optimism was underscored by an announcement the company planned to order 40 Airbus narrow-bodies with options for another 94 single aisle jets from the Toulouse-headquartered manufacturer, a blow to rival Boeing and also Embraer.
