One decade later, the group TAP returns to profit

Fernando Pinto had already left the CEO position in TAP, but all signs pointed to an improvement in the group’s results. Last year’s annual report now confirms that the TAP SGPS group, the mother company that includes the airline, is back to profit, after a decade of losses. The aviation business was enough to make up for the losses the engineering and maintenance business continues to cause. 

The report is disclosed, this Monday, by the Portuguese newspaper Jornal de Negócios, which states that TAP SGPD reached profit for the first time since 2007, reporting a net result of 21.2 million euros last year, against the 27.7 million in losses in 2016.

The aviation business made the biggest contribution to this result. TAP S.A., which controls the airline, had a 100.4 million euros’ profit last year, three times the 33.5 million euros’ profit it had registered in 2016. As for TAP Maintenance and Engineering Brazil, it continues to weigh in on the accounts and registered 50.1 million losses, a worsening in comparison to the 31.9 million euros’ losses in 2016.

This “significant improvement” of the results is a result of the “strong behavior of the market seen in the beginning of 2017, which remained virtually the same throughout the year, sustained by a general recovery of economic conditions”, TAP pointed in its report.

On the contrary, the increase in oil prices caused a surge in costs with fuels from 433.8 million in 2016 to 580.2 million in 2017.

Even so, the operational result of the group got to 106.8 million euros in 2017, 93.8 million more than the 13 million registered in the previous year. Operational income increased more 600 million to a total of 2,977 million euros.

Debt also improved, decreasing from 642 million to 582.4 million last year. This is particularly significant after the company signed with several banks an agreement that involved a debt restructuring, back in June of 2017.