Japan’s ANA logs record quarterly $1-billion loss on pandemic

Japanese airline ANA Holdings said on Wednesday, July 29, it saw a record quarterly loss worth $1 billion as the coronavirus continues to hammer the global aviation industry with no clear end in sight.

The company said its net loss during the April-June period came to 108.8 billion yen ($1.04 billion), its worst 3-month return since it began issuing quarterly financial figures in 2003 and a sharp fall from 11.4 billion yen in profit a year ago.

Its operating loss reached 159.0 billion yen, compared with an operating profit of 16.2 billion yen a year ago, with sales of 121.6 billion yen, down 75.7%.

“Passenger demand for both international and domestic flights declined significantly, due to worldwide government travel restrictions and the declaration of the state of emergency from the Japanese government,” Ichiro Fukuzawa, chief financial officer of ANA Holdings, said in a statement.

ANA has attempted to cut costs and take other measures to ease the damage, he said.

“While we aggressively worked to offset lost revenue by catering to the increased demand for international cargo transportation…we were unable to offset the unprecedented impact of COVID-19 and ended with a large quarterly loss,” he said.

ANA did not issue annual forecasts due to high uncertainty involving the outlook of the pandemic. 

The company reduced its international passenger services to an eye-watering 13.8% of activity from the same period last year.

The remaining services were used mainly to repatriate Japanese nationals from abroad, and to let others leave for foreign countries.

Revenues from international services fell 94.2% from a year ago.

ANA has managed to bring domestic passenger flights in June up to about 25% of the level seen a year ago as the Japanese government pushes to reopen the economy.

For July, ANA planned to bring its domestic flight operations to 43.3% of the same time last year before bringing it up to 72.4% in August compared to a year ago.

The firm’s cargo operations were less affected partly due to the need to move emergency supplies, including masks, ANA said. 

Revenues from the international cargo operations fell 2.7%, while domestic cargo sales dropped 41.5%, ANA said. – Rappler.com