KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 28 — Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd’s (MAHB) net loss narrowed to RM766.44 million for the financial year that ended on December 31, 2021 (FY2021) from a net loss of RM1.12 billion last year, due to a further reduction in core operational expenses by 11 per cent as well as an increase in other incomes.
In addition, the airport operator said its loss for FY2021 “was mitigated by the recognition of deferred tax asset recognised arising from the current year’s business losses.”
Its revenue for the year slipped to RM1.67 billion against RM1.87 billion previously, due to a 16.0 per cent contraction in passenger movements during the movement control order (MCO) since March 2020.
That had subsequently pulled down its aeronautical segment revenue by 9.9 per cent to RM798.1 million.
“Revenue from non-airport operations increased by 12.3 per cent due to higher revenue from agriculture, driven by higher fresh fruit bunches (FFB) price, repair maintenance and hotel businesses,” it said in a stock exchange filing to Bursa Malaysia.
MAHB said for FY2021, its Malaysian operations recorded a lower pretax loss (LBT) of RM193.7 million from an LBT of RM448.1 million in FY2020, Turkey operations’ LBT at RM22.3 million from an LBT of RM626.8 the previous year.
In terms of passenger movements, the group said for FY2021, it saw signs of traffic recovery from Covid-19, albeit at a different pace in Turkey and Malaysia.
“Turkey operations showed signs towards normalisation as passenger traffic had increased by 47.7 per cent (international: 69.8 per cent, domestic: 37.8 per cent) to 25.4 million against 17.2 million recorded in the prior year,” it said.
“Whereas, Malaysia operations recorded a decrease in passenger movements by 58.5 per cent (international: minus 86.3 per cent, domestic: minus 42.3 per cent) to 10.7 million passengers against 25.8 million passengers in the prior year.”
MAHB said the non-aeronautical segment revenue decreased 16.0 per cent to RM668.5 million from the previous year due to the lower commercial rental revenue from Malaysian operations
For the fourth quarter, MAHB saw its net loss contracted to RM136.73 million from RM685.02 million, attributable to higher revenue of 109.1 per cent, coupled with lower core operational expenses by 8 per cent from the same period last year.
Its revenue jumped to RM551.34 million from RM263.64 million previously, in tandem with the significant increase in passenger volumes with the easing of the MCO, interstate travel, and the introduction of Vaccinated Travel Lane (VTL) in Malaysia, as well as the continued recovery momentum in Turkey.
Moving forward, MAHB noted that the Singapore – Kuala Lumpur VTL, the resumption of Umrah travel and the introduction of several new domestic routes were some of the recent developments which will continue to drive traffic recovery in the near term.
MAHB said it “remains cautiously optimistic on the continued recovery, whilst closely monitoring the developments of the variants of concern, booster vaccines efficacy and travel restrictions and its impact to the passenger traffic recovery.”
— Bernama
