Virgin Atlantic records profit forecasts 10% annual growth ahead

Virgin Atlantic today published its accounts and results for the 10 months ending 29 February 2004 which show a pre tax profit of £20.9 million on a turnover of £1272 million. Last year's results showed a profit of £15.7 million on a turnover of £1401 million for the year ending April 2003.

Virgin Atlantic has recently changed its year end from April to February to fit in with the reporting requirements of its shareholders, Virgin Group and Singapore Airlines, whose financial years end in March. All figures cover the activities of the airline and its holiday and cargo operations.

The operating environment during the period reported on included the effects of the war in Iraq, the SARS outbreak, increasing fuel prices and the ongoing global terrorist threat.

Commenting on the results Sir Richard Branson, Chairman of the company, said:

"To record any sort of profit in the period of trading is impressive and I'm delighted that Virgin Atlantic has made over £20m and much of that has been down to a great performance by all our staff over this period.

"While maintaining a tough grip on our costs we're starting to see positive signs in our revenues. Our passenger numbers are well up on last year, in fact our load factors have been around 90% over the last few months. Perhaps more significant is the improvement in passenger yields and the early signs of a recovery in the business class market. However, yields are still below historic levels while fuel prices are at a 13 year high which means the trading environment remains tough.

"Nonetheless the last six months of trading has encouraged us to plan to grow our business by around 10% per annum going forward and in the next year we plan to launch new routes such as Sydney, the Bahamas and Cuba while adding capacity to the Far East and across the north Atlantic. We will add three more Airbus A340-600 aircraft to our fleet and recruit approximately 1400 staff.

"During the financial reporting period Virgin Atlantic invested heavily in its products and people. It introduced the new award winning Upper Class Suite in October which is now flying on 20% of the airline's fleet, moved from Terminal 1 to Terminal 4 at New York's JFK airport and opened a new state of the art Clubhouse there and took delivery of two Airbus A340-600 aircraft and the airline's 13th Boeing 747-400."