(Adds IATA comments, liquidity, confirms cost-cutting plan)
July 30 (Reuters) - Spanish travel booking group Amadeus said on Friday the number of air bookings it received continued to recover in the second quarter, picking up most notably in June, its best month since the pandemic started.
Amadeus’s air bookings by travel agents were still down 67.6% in the three months to June from the same period in 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, but that marked an improvement on the 79.2% contraction recorded in the first quarter of 2021.
No figures were given for the second quarter of last year.
“Air bookings and passengers boarded have gradually improved each month and accelerated in June, which has been the best performing month since the start of the pandemic,” Chief Executive Luis Maroto said in a statement.
International air bookings jumped worldwide ahead of the northern hemisphere’s summer holiday season but demand is still fragile amidst COVID-19 mutations concerns, global airline industry body the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said earlier this month.
Passenger demand in June was still 60% lower compared with the pre-crisis levels in 2019, but increased almost three times from the same period of last year, according to IATA.
Amadeus said its second-quarter adjusted net loss narrowed 90% to 23.6 million euros ($28.03 million), down from a year-earlier loss of 231 million, which was the company’s first quarterly loss in a decade.
Analysts had expected a loss of 48 million euros, according to Refinitiv.
Shares in the Spanish group were down 1.4% in late morning, while the Spanish blue-chip index was down 0.8%.
Amadeus on Friday also confirmed it is on track to deliver its 550 million euro cost-cutting plan in 2021, 50 million more than a year ago. It also said it expects its capex spending in the third and fourth quarters to be broadly stable from 2020.
The company, which sells online booking software to airlines and travel agents, closed the second quarter with available liquidity of 3.36 billion euros, compared to the 3.80 billion euros at the end of March.
$1 = 0.8419 euros Reporting by Anita Kobylinska in Gdansk; Editing by Inti Landauro, Kirsten Donovan and Jan Harvey

Source: Reuters

Powered by NewsAPI.org