LONDON (Reuters) - British travel group Thomas Cook issued its third profit warning in less than a year on Thursday, sending shares tumbling to a 6-1/2 year low as it said discounting and higher fuel and hotel costs would hurt it during the peak summer season.
Thomas Cook said it had received multiple bids for its airline unit, but this was overshadowed by what Chief Executive Peter Fankhauser called a “difficult trading environment” despite a delay to Britain’s exit from the European Union.
“With a lot of holidays left to sell across the market, there are high levels of discounting at this early stage of the season... This is putting further pressure on margins,” Fankhauser told reporters, adding that a delay to Brexit from March 29 until October had brought no respite.
“There’s no doubt that we have (had) a decline in consumer confidence during this whole Brexit phase in the run-up to March, but we have seen no material change to booking patterns in recent weeks since the delay to Brexit was announced,” he added.
Thomas Cook warned that second-half underlying earnings before interest and tax would be below the same period last year and added it had agreed a 300 million pound bank facility to provide more liquidity for the 2019/20 winter season.
No comments:
Post a Comment