Flight Centre confirms profit struggle Steve Jones
Flight Centre has reported a pre-tax profit of $99.8 million, reduced to $40.4m on the back of one-off costs and write-downs.
Including the one-off asset impairment and write-downs, the retailer reported an after-tax profit of $38.2m, down 72% on the previous year.
Total Transactional Value in Australia fell 7% to $5.9 billion.
Reiterating its market commentary from earlier this month, Flight Centre said sales were affected by a slowdown in global demand during the second and third quarters and lower than normal yields. It said airline discounting from airlines and land operators had been “unprecedented”.
Its loss making US business broke even in the fourth quarter but lost money during the year, as did its Asia operations.
Flight Centre is targeting a pre-tax profit in 2009/10 of between $125 million and $135m although it stressed the trading climate remains uncertain.
