HLO targets break-even
HELLOWORLD Travel’s long track record in domestic travel in Australia and New Zealand means that open borders within Australia and on the Tasman will be sufficient to generate “break-even TTV levels” across the business, according to the company’s 2020/21 update which was released late yesterday (TD breaking news yesterday).
The unaudited figures showed $94 million in revenue, down 68% on the prior year, and an overall pre-tax loss of $49 million.
The company received $23 million in Government wage subsidies, and “with very tight cost management across all of our business divisions HLO was able to minimise losses,” the report said.
Despite the challenges of sales volumes, revenue and profitability falling by 85% due to circumstances beyond the company’s control, “our team has done an extraordinary job maintaining morale and maintaining our presence with minimal costs, while our travel agency network members have shown incredible resilience and done an outstanding job returning billions of dollars in cancelled bookings”.
Helloworld has reduced its staff head count by 60% and renegotiated its banking facilities with the support of Westpac, giving the company an “extended liquidity runway beyond end calendar 2022”.
Investment has continued in technology platforms, with the company noting that having a significantly reduced workforce means “recovery will be contingent on having best of breed technology solutions to deliver maximum productivity throughout the business”.
The update also gave a comprehensive breakdown of the group’s now 2,224 locations across Australia and NZ, which comprises 1,234 agencies and 991 home-based consultants.
MEANWHILE with yesterday’s release being the second year running that Helloworld has not published audited accounts on time, CEO Andrew Burnes cited the challenges of lockdowns over the last eight weeks.
Burnes said every effort had been made to finalise the figures by 31 Aug, but with teams from both HLO and auditors EY working from home “the audit was not quite complete”.
However the company and EY both do not expect any material difference when the audited statements are released within the next week, he added.