KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB) saw its earnings surge in the first quarter ended March 31, 2017 (Q1 FY17), underpinned by the better performance of the Malaysian operations though its Turkey operations recorded greater losses.
Announcing its results on Friday, MAH said its earnings rose 264% to RM62.02 million from RM17.01 million a year ago. Earnings per share were 2.94 sen compared with 0.13 sen a year ago.
MAHB reported foreign currency gain of RM827,000 compared with the losses of RM163 million a year ago. There was also an unrealised gain on derivative financial instruments of RM3.91 million compared with losses of RM20.73 million a year ago.
Operating profit saw a 32.8% increase to RM269.61 million from RM202.94 million a year ago. At the topline, MAHB’s revenue rose 7.3% to RM1.093 billion from RM1.019 billion.
Group profit before taxation and zakat (PBT) rose 161.5% to RM99.9 million on-year due to the Malaysia operations. However, it was negated by higher loss before taxation from the overseas operations.
Elaborating on the Malaysian operations, MAHB said PBT increased 77.9% to RM200.3 million.
“The favourable variance was mainly due to higher revenue, higher other income and lower total costs, by 9.5% or RM72.6 million, 17.3% or RM7.6 million and 1.0% or RM6.7 million respectively,” it said.
However, MAHB’s overseas operations slumped deeper into the red. Loss before tax (LBT) was RM100.4 million – widening by 34.9% or RM26 million – from LBT of RM74.4 million a year ago.
“This was prior to taking into account the loss of RM61.5 million (Q1 2016: RM57.8 million) recognised primarily due to the amortisation of fair value for the concession rights owing to the fair valuation exercise on the acquisition of ISG and LGM.
“The unfavourable variance was mainly due to the increase in depreciation and amortisation and finance costs by 17.3% or RM12.4 million and 7.4% or RM8.5 million respectively,” it said.
Elaborating on its revenue, MAHB said revenue from the Malaysia airport operations increased 8.8% to RM797.2 million on-year was due to the non-aeronautical revenue which increased 11% to RM386.6 million from RM348.2 million.
Higher passenger growth resulted in higher retail and rental revenues by 11.6% or RM21.2 million and 10.4% or RM17.2 million respectively.
As for aeronautical revenue from Malaysia airports, it said there was an increase of 6.7% to RM410.7 million from RM384.8 million.
Both international and domestic passenger traffic increased by 12.0% and 9.0% respectively.
The unfavourable variance was due to lower aeronautical and non-aeronautical revenues.
