JAL's profit nearly halved due to high fuel cost
7/11/2008 16:29
Japan Airlines Corp reported today its group operating profit for the
first half of fiscal 2008 dropped 46.6 percent from a year earlier to 30.23
billion yen, mainly due to high fuel prices and slack demand for air travel amid
a global economic slowdown.
During the April-September period, JAL's revenues
fell 6.1 percent to 1.07 trillion yen while pretax profit declined 69.3 percent
to 18.02 billion yen.
But its net profit marked more than a fivefold increase
to 36. 67 billion yen, thanks to an extraordinary gain of around 41.2 billion
yen from the sale of its subsidiary JAL Card Inc. to Mitsubishi UFJ Financial
Group Inc.
For the whole fiscal year, JAL now expects an operating profit of
28 billion yen, down from an earlier projected 50 billion yen, on 2.09 trillion
yen in revenues, down from a previous forecast of 2.18 trillion yen. It kept its
net profit forecast unchanged at 13 billion yen.
The airlines also cut its
operating profit forecast for the whole of fiscal 2008 to next March by 44
percent from its earlier projection, citing declining demand for international
flights particularly among business travelers.
Revenues from international
services managed to grow 2.5 percent from a year earlier to 393.81 billion yen.
But the total international passenger demand measured in terms of revenue
passenger kilometers slid 9.9 percent on declining demand on routes to China and
Guam as well as weaker demand on those to the United States and
Europe.
Xinhua
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