(Alliance News) - Wizz Air Holdings PLC on Thursday said a sharp fall in passengers in its third quarter resulted in revenue taking a significant blow, but it hopes vaccines will bring a gradual end to the Covid-19 crisis.
For the three months to December 31, the budget airline posted revenue of EUR149.9 million, down a whopping 77% from EUR673.3 million the year prior. This was as passengers carried also fell 77% to 2.3 million from 10.0 million.
Load factor in the third quarter was 63.1%, down from 92.5% a year before
Wizz swung to an underlying loss before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of EUR40.9 million from earnings of EUR130.8 million a year ago.
The deterioration in its performance was a direct result of widespread travel restrictions imposed by governments due to Coviid-19, the company said, noting that while it expects trading to continue to be hurt in the next few months, 2021 should bring a return back to normalcy.
"We believe capacity levels in view of the restrictions will continue to be depressed during January, February and part of March 2021 and with the increasing administration of the Covid-19 vaccine we expect 2021 to be a year of transition with Wizz Air ready to service underlying demand in a fast and agile way as it becomes increasingly unrestricted," Wizz said.
However it assured that steps taken to deal with the pandemic have put the business in a good position once the pandemic subsides.
"We remain focused on optimising our cost structure and cash burn. The initiatives we are implementing in our business have a very singular focus: enabling the company to emerge from the Covid-19 context as a structural winner. Our ambition is to fully restart our operations as soon as travel restrictions reduce, at all times protecting the health of customers and employees," Chief Executive Jozsef Varadi said.
At the end of December, Wizz had cash of EUR1.20 billion.
Shares in Wizz Air were trading 0.2% higher at 4,214.00 pence each on Thursday morning in London. The stock has more than doubled from a nadir of 2,006.00p back on March 19, when the first UK lockdown was imposed.
By Ife Taiwo; ifetaiwo@alliancenews.com
Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Wizz Air (WIZZ)
