What a difference 12 months makes … for Flight Centre Travel Group (FCTG), truer words have never been spoken. Australia’s largest travel agency group has just upgraded its 2023 (FY23) profit forecast to reflect a massive rebound from a year ago.
Based on current trading data, FCTG now expects to bring in a profit (of underlying earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation – EBITDA) of between $295 million and $305 million for the 12 months to 30 June 2023.
The $300 million midpoint represents a seven per cent increase on the previously predicted midpoint of $270 million and $290 million and a whopping $483 million turnaround on its underlying $183 million FY22 loss.
FCTG expects to hit a total transaction value (TTV) for FY23 of around $22 billion, which is 115 per cent up on FY22’s $10.3 billion and the company’s second-strongest full-year result behind FY19 ($23.7 billion).
While leisure continues its strong return, FCTG expects corporate TTV for FY23 to reach $11 billion, which is 20 per cent higher than the previous record of $8.9 billion (FY19).
FCTG managing director Graham Turner said that “overall, we are pleased with our continued recovery as demand has generally rebounded solidly across both our leisure and corporate travel businesses”.
“In leisure, we are emerging from the pandemic as a more productive, more efficient and more diverse business with a strong brand stable, enhanced capability and efficient and productive models that are now starting to achieve scale benefits,” the FCTG boss said.
“During FY23, we also invested in our luxury travel collection through the Scott Dunn acquisition early in the 2H and, more recently, the Luxperience events business to bolster our presence in a very attractive leisure sector.
Prioritising leisure travel
“Looking ahead, our expectations are that leisure travellers will continue to prioritise holidays and experiences over other areas of discretionary spending, as we have seen in the past and as evidenced by the consistent year-on-year growth in outbound travel in large and important markets like Australia.”
On corporate, Turner said the group has “delivered record TTV while investing significantly for the future by securing large volumes of new accounts, expanding our sales force and introducing innovative new platforms and products for our customers, which should lead to stronger returns in the years ahead.
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