{"id":77764,"date":"2024-03-13T01:58:35","date_gmt":"2024-03-13T06:58:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/equitynewsreport.com\/cathay-pacific-rebounds-from-covid-slump-with-first-annual-profit-in-4-years\/"},"modified":"2024-03-13T01:58:35","modified_gmt":"2024-03-13T06:58:35","slug":"cathay-pacific-rebounds-from-covid-slump-with-first-annual-profit-in-4-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/equitynewsreport.com\/h\/cathay-pacific-rebounds-from-covid-slump-with-first-annual-profit-in-4-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Cathay Pacific rebounds from COVID slump with first annual profit in 4 years"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\"Cathay
\n\u00a9 Reuters. Cathay Pacific employees work at Hong Kong International Airport, in Hong Kong, China March 8, 2023. REUTERS\/Lam Yik\/file photo<\/span>
\n<\/i>\n<\/div>\n

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Cathay Pacific posted its first annual profit since 2019 as it left behind the COVID-19 period distress that drove heavy losses and layoffs at the airline, sending its shares surging to a four-year high. <\/p>\n

Hong Kong’s flagship airline announced on Wednesday it made a HK$9.79 billion ($1.25 billion) net profit in 2023, and said it plans to expand its workforce by around 20%, or 5,000 people, this year.<\/p>\n

Cathay will pay it first dividend to ordinary shareholders since 2019, it said.<\/p>\n

A jump in demand after the lifting of COVID-related travel restrictions contributed to the strong financial performance, Cathay Group Chair Patrick Healy said in a statement. Hong Kong and mainland China lifted international travel restrictions in early 2023. <\/p>\n

Revenue rose 85% in 2023 to HK$94.5 billion.<\/p>\n

Cathay’s stock price soared more than 6% after the results to its highest level since February 2020, outpacing a 0.6% rise for the benchmark Hong Kong index. <\/p>\n

The airline had received a $5 billion pandemic-related rescue package led by the Hong Kong government in 2020 and posted a loss of HK$6.6 billion in 2022. <\/p>\n

Cathay said it aims to reach 80% of its pre-pandemic passenger flights within the second quarter of this year, and 100% within the first quarter of 2025 – three months later than a previously stated target. <\/p>\n

The carrier has restored capacity more slowly than its closest rival, Singapore Airlines (OTC:), because it faced tighter quarantine rules for longer, and needed to hire more staff to bring back services. <\/p>\n

A shortage of staff led the airline to cancel and reduce flights. <\/p>\n

A global imbalance between supply of flights and travel demand last year drove up ticket prices and airline yields. <\/p>\n

“We expect this imbalance to diminish and yields to continue to normalise throughout 2024 as airlines around the world continue to add capacity,” Cathay CEO Ronald Lam said.<\/p>\n

The airline reiterated that it is still in the market to order new mid-size wide-body aircraft. <\/p>\n

Cathay Pacific is a full service passenger and cargo airline, with two subsidiaries: low cost carrier HK Express and cargo carrier Air Hong Kong. <\/p>\n

($1 = 7.8243 Hong Kong dollars) <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a9 Reuters. Cathay Pacific employees work at Hong Kong International Airport, in Hong Kong, China March 8, 2023. REUTERS\/Lam Yik\/file photo HONG KONG (Reuters) – Cathay Pacific posted its first annual profit since 2019 as it left behind the COVID-19 period distress that drove heavy losses and layoffs at the airline, sending its shares surging to a four-year high. Hong Kong’s flagship airline announced on Wednesday it made a HK$9.79 billion ($1.25 billion) net profit in 2023, and said it plans to expand its workforce by around 20%, or 5,000 people, this year. Cathay will pay it first dividend to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":77765,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,49,50,3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/equitynewsreport.com\/h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77764"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/equitynewsreport.com\/h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/equitynewsreport.com\/h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/equitynewsreport.com\/h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/equitynewsreport.com\/h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/equitynewsreport.com\/h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/equitynewsreport.com\/h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/equitynewsreport.com\/h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/equitynewsreport.com\/h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/equitynewsreport.com\/h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}