SINGAPORE: Singapore Airlines Group continues to soar higher as strong air travel demand boost its half-year FY2023/2024 net profit to S$1.44 billion, a 55 per cent increase from S$927 million in the same period for FY2022/FY23.
The group's revenue rose 8.9 per cent to S$9.16 billion in the first half of FY2023/2024 from S$8.417 billion in the same period for FY2022/2023.
Singapore Airlines chief executive officer Goh Choon Phong said the group has been focusing on three priorities to become one of the first airlines to resume operations post pandemic while offering better products and services to its customers.
The three priorities include boosting the group's liquidity through shareholder fundraising, provide refunds to customers and preserving the airline group's operating capabilities by continuing to take delivery of new aircraft during the pandemic.
"I think everybody is aware of the difficult time we had during Covid-19 being a relatively small country with a small population base and having no domestic market.
"During the depths of Covid-19 in April 2020 our capacity plunged to only three per cent…and the number of passengers we carried were just shy of 11,000 people compared to 3.4 million that we typically carry in a month. You can imagine the stress it has in our cash flow," Goh said in a media roundtable here today.
The group said the strong half-year financial record was driven by the robust demand for air travel that continued into the northern summer travel season led by the rebound in passenger traffic to North Asia with the full reopening of China, Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan.
In terms of the number of passengers carried, Singapore Airlines and its budget carrier Scoot flew 17.4 million passengers in the first six months of FY2023/2024 with 88.8 per cent load factor.
As of Sept 30 this year, the group's shareholders' equity stood at S$17.3 billion, a decline of S$2.5 billion from March 31, 2023 due to the redemption in June 2023 of half of the mandatory convertible bonds that were issued in June 2021, amounted to S$3.4 billion.
Its total debt balances went down by S$0.7 billion to S$14.7 billion mainly due to repayment of borrowings while its cash and bank balances decreased by S$2.8 billion to S$13.5 billion.