By Lorenz S. Marasigan
THE projected growth of its passenger throughput will catapult AirAsia Philippines to the black this year, the group’s chief honcho said on Friday.
In a regulatory filing pertaining to the overall operations of Southeast Asia’s largest budget carrier during the first quarter of 2015, AirAsia Group CEO Tony Fernandes said the company’s operations in the Philippines through its two subsidiaries will grow rapidly this year, given the improvements in its bottom line brought about by lower fuel costs and higher passenger-load factor.
“The Philippines AirAsia’s turnaround story is developing quite well as we see positive growth coming from the associate, especially with the 11 points improvement to its load factor at 77 percent,” he said.
Fernandes said the local carrier recorded a 25-percent increase in revenue per available seat kilometer, and a 14-percent rise in ancillary revenues. This helped taper the net loss posted during the first quarter of the year to P854.5 million from P1.4 billion the year prior.
“The Philippines is already showing good growth numbers and we are targeting for the associate to be profitable in the fourth quarter of the year, and to continue to remain cash positive,” the executive said.
This year AirAsia’s revenue-building initiatives for its operations in the Philippines will include the expansion of its international and domestic routes.
“We will focus on building international routes, taking advantage of the strong group network and to focus on leisure destinations like Boracay and Puerto Princesa,” Fernandes said.
This will allow AirAsia Philippines to be in the right position to launch its initial public offering by 2018, he said.
Making a debut on the local bourse requires a company to post profits for three consecutive years. The listing initiative will help AirAsia Philippines to “recover from debt” and further expand its operations.
AirAsia Philippines CEO Joy D. Cañeba earlier said the exercise will help the company expand its capacity by adding more planes and further widening its network of routes. Her target for this year is to grow the company’s customer base to 4.5 million passengers, almost 28 percent higher than the 3.12 million the year prior due to the relief in operation costs.
AirAsia Philippines flies to 20 local destinations from Manila, Clark (Pampanga) and Kalibo (Aklan). It also flies from Manila to Incheon and Pusan in Korea; Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia; Shanghai and Jinjian City in China; Macau; and Taipei in Taiwan.