Virgin Australia’s end of financial year results weren’t all bad, despite posting a full-year loss of $681 million, a loss they attribute to tax measures and asset write-offs.
The loss was created by a $120 million impairment of international assets and deferred tax accounting write-offs for $451.9 million.
Virgin Australia Group Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director John Borghetti said while the adjustments had impacted results for the year they were “non-cash and have no impact on the fundamentals of the group’s underlying business”.
“We are confident in the performance of the group’s underlying business and that long-term benefits from our growth plans will be delivered.”
Virgin Australia Group Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director John Borghetti
In better news for the group, it achieved an underlying profit before tax of $109.6 million, thanks to record earnings in the core domestic business.
John Borghetti said this was their strongest result in a decade, marking a $113.3 million increase on the previous year, despite a $45 million hit from increasing fuel prices.
Virgin’s revenue for the year to June 30 was up 7.4% to $5.42 billion and it expects revenue to increase by at least 7% in the first quarter of 2018/19 financial year
Virgin Austalia’s International operations still took a hit with a 51% decrease in EBITDA to $19 million, a result of fuel prices and the impact from last year’s volcanic eruption in Bali that forced the airline to cancel flights.
Virgin Australia expects its new Melbourne to Hong Kong route and Sydney to Hong Kong routes to contribute to strong passenger numbers this year.
- READ: Virgin Australia says it MAY use Tigerair across the Tasman
- READ: Virgin Australia’s got beef (literally) over Air NZ