TRAVEL GIANT IN £163m LOSS

Thomas Cook crashed £163million into the red last year.

The firm blamed price cuts and a raft of one-off costs in an unscheduled update earlier this week.

But the scale of the impact was only revealed yesterday when it announced its annual results. They showed it slumped from a bare £9m profit to a £163m loss last year – nearly £500,000 a day.

Annual sales rose 6% to £9.58billion but debts jumped by £40m to £389m.

Shares in Thomas Cook tumbled another 6.6% yesterday, having already plummeted by as much as 30% on Tuesday.

David Madden, market analyst at CMC Markets UK, said the mood among traders was still nervous.

“The travel operator has been struggling in 2018, and things are getting worse as the year goes on.”