FC dark before the dawn

THE latest financial results released by Flight Centre this morning show the full extent of the COVID impact, with the travel company revealing an underlying pre-tax basis loss of $507 million, in line with guidance given in May (TD breaking news).

Group TTV also plummeted by $11.358 billion for the FY21 to $3.945 billion, while Flight Centre’s operating revenue of $396 million was also down from the $1.897 billion figure posted in the previous year.

While the bottom line figures were grim, the company did manage to trim its underlying costs by 59% on FY20, with the bulk of expenses in the last 12-month period comprised of employee benefits, depreciation, marketing costs and one-off payouts such as redundancies, employee retention plans and the return of select JobKeeper payments received on behalf of stood-down staff.

Encouragingly, Flight Centre did experience some respite toward the end of the reporting period, with the recovery led by a resurgent market in the United States and an increase in corporate travel bookings.

The company also noted it enjoyed “strong and immediate rebounds” in periods where restrictions were lifted, and also revealed it had undertaken multi-million dollar investments in technology to capitalise on market share opportunities as travel returns, headlined by new “game-changing” FCM and Corporate Traveller platforms.

“FY21 was another challenging year for our sector but conditions have slowly started to improve,” CEO Graham Turner said.

The report also showed that Turner received a total remuneration package of $750,000 for the year.