Tunisia and Greek woes hit Thomas Cook profits
THE Tunisian terror attack and concerns about the Greek economic crisis forced beleagured package holiday firm Thomas Cook to issue a profit warning yesterday.
The events will hit its full year profit by around £25m.
The company has cancelled all trips to the North African country until October after a gunman killed 38 holidaymakers.
It evacuated more than 15,000 people on 60 flights and sent assistance teams to support customers and staff. And it managed an 85pc rebooking rate for people to go elsewhere.
The Greek crisis last month led to a fall in bookings, and although demand has now returned it will cost the business £5m this year.
Chief executive Peter Fankhauser said: ‘There were no cancellations for Greece but there was a threeweek slowdown.
‘Customers were afraid, because of media reports, that there would not be food in the hotels… our local teams have worked diligently to ensure that the economic issues do not disrupt our customers’ holidays. Demand came back strongly afterwards.’
The profit warning came as third-quarter results showed a £44m pre-tax loss for the three months to the end of June, an improvement on an £81m loss a year earlier.
Fankhauser said operating profit in the quarter of £3m was its first in six years and it had made ‘good progress’ from a £50m loss a year before. Revenue rose £4m, or 0.2pc, to £1.95bn.
The strong pound and weak euro hit the firm. Currency movements will wipe £39m from operating profit but the company said it will meet full-year profit growth expectations. Analysts at Numis cut the full-year profit forecast by 12pc to £309m. Some 78pc of holidays for summer 2015 have been sold, the same as a year ago, and bookings continued to improve into the summer.
Fankhauser said the company had learnt from the mistakes it made dealing with the parents of two children who died from carbon monoxide poisoning at a hotel in Corfu nine years ago.
He said: ‘We have made a lot of progress – we are experienced with handling a crisis now. We have procedures in place. We make sure we put customers at the heart of the company.’
Shares fell 0.5p to 125.9p.