TAP Group reduces 2019 losses by €12.4M to total €105.6M
The national airline recorded a loss of 105.6 million in 2019, as a result of the investment of more than 1.5 billion in fleet renewal.
The TAP Group recorded losses of €105.6 million in 2019, an improvement of €12.4 million compared to the €118 million loss recorded in 2018 by the airline, announced TAP SGPS on Thursday.
According to TAP SGPS’s communiqué, which includes all the group’s companies, sent to the Portuguese Securities Market Commission (CMVM), “the process involving the management of the entry of 30 new aircraft and the exit of 18 old ones had a negative financial impact of €55 million on the year’s result.”
The company led by Antonoaldo Neves also states that in 2019 “it was penalised by between €30 million – €35 million as a result of the inefficiency of the infrastructure”, referring to the “lack of investment in Lisbon airport capacity” and “airspace congestion”.
According to TAP, these factors also “had a negative impact on the punctuality of the operation by approximately nine percentage points”, which corresponded to a “cost per passenger in terms of compensation for irregularities of more than double the Iberian ‘benchmark'”.
However, in total, the punctuality index increased six percentage points and the regularity of operation stood at 99.2%, an improvement on the 98.2% of 2018, which according to TAP represents “about 1,400 fewer flights cancelled”.
In environmental terms, and despite the expenses with the incorporation of new aircraft, the company points out that fleet renewal “was decisive, in the second half of the year, to improve efficiency (lower operating cost).”
According to TAP, the NEO fleet (new Airbus aircraft) “enabled the company to reduce CO2 emissions by approximately 170,000 tons,” a “17% reduction in the CO2 indicator per passenger compared to 2015.”
The operating result went from a loss of €44 million in 2018 to a profit of €58.6 million in 2019, which the airline attributes to “cost consolidation and revenue recovery in the second half of the year.”
In the second half of 2019, “TAP had a net profit of €14.1 million, compared with a loss of €28 million in the same period of 2018”.
“TAP was the company that invested the most in Portugal in 2019, having registered more than €1.5 billion in investment, including the purchase of 30 new aircraft, which allowed the renewal of 70% of the long haul fleet in a single year,” highlights the company.
In terms of passengers, TAP ended the year with 17 million people transported, 8% more than in 2018.
The company also mentions that the maintenance and engineering division in Brazil (ME Brasil, the former VEM) reached an EBITDAR (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization and restructuring costs) of €3.1 million, “without any transfer of monetary resources from Portugal to Brazil.”
TAP ended the year with a cash position of €434 million, the largest in the company’s history, according to the statement.
The company also states that it is the North American market which “makes it possible to offset the volatility of the Brazilian market, which has shown signs of recovery in recent months.”
“TAP continues to be the leading airline in passenger air transportation between Brazil and Europe,” the company says.
