LASTMINUTE.COM N.V. First signs of rebound make the sky clearer
Amsterdam / Chiasso, 25 June 2020 - lm holding, a European leader in the online travel and leisure industry, today provides a current trading update on bookings, cash and refunds.
After 9 weeks with the number of bookings down more than 90% compared to the same period of last year, lm group is registering a significant rebound since the first days of June.
In the third week of June (w25 as reported in the graph above) the business reported a decrease of bookings of -59% compared to the previous year, significantly better than our latest forecast, which was projecting -90/95% until the end of the month.
Even considering the fact that COVID-19 put lm group business at standstill for several weeks and implied high extraordinary costs to manage the crisis, such a rebound, backed by all actions put in place by the Company to secure the business and reduce variable and fixed expenses, is having positive outcomes. The main KPI that was, and still is, under constant monitoring is the cash available which, after a serious drop in March, registered an increase up to the end of May with positive expectation for the closing of the semester.
At the end of May, credit lines available were €92.6M of which €86.6M drawn. The net financial position reached €7M.
Still the refunding process of the cancelled bookings looks quite complicated, primarily due to the airlines slow response to the request of the customers. In that respect, lm group is providing an enormous effort to handle the giant number of contacts and claims from the customers and to find an efficient way to manage the very fragmented mechanisms activated by the suppliers for the refunding.
Marco Corradino, CEO of lastminute.com states "We see some concrete signs of rebound. They are hopefully occurring prior to what was in our expectations. This conveys messages of optimism and the impact we are registering on the numbers is positive. The Company is reacting well thanks to its effective business model and efficient organization. Both things contribute to make lm group capable of a better performance against the market average. On the other hand, we are still very far from the volumes of 2019 and we expect to remain well below them even in the course of the second semester. Unfortunately rebound doesn't mean "full recovery". For that reason, we are moving on with all initiatives already planned to further improve our way of doing business and reduce expenses up to the wider extent possible. We are still managing issues with suppliers in order to make the refunding process clearer, faster and more effective to guarantee our customers the responses they need. Even if today, the previously announced capital increase appears to be not necessarily mandatory up to the maximum extent of CHF 100M, to proceed with caution is still imperative. We'll do as we have done until now and we'll let open all the options we have on the table at least until the end of the summer season".
lm holding convened the EGM to vote on the capital increase announced in the 15 May Press Release, on the 31st July at 9:00am in Amsterdam. On the same day, the Company will release its 1H2020 Financial Statements.
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Financial agenda 2020
31 July 2020 | Extraordinary General Meeting of Shareholders |
31 July 2020 | 1H2020 Financial Statement Disclosure and IR Conference Call |
11. November 2020 | Resultate 3. Quartal 2020 |
| Provider | Channel | Contact | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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EQS Group Ltd., Switzerland switzerland.eqs.com |
newsbox.ch www.newsbox.ch |
Provider/Channel related enquiries cs.switzerland@eqs.com +41 41 763 00 50 |
