EDreams ODIGEO has reported a net loss of €40.5 million for the year to March 31 following the impact of Covid-19. Last year, the Spanish OTA posted a €9.5 million profit.
Adjusted EBITDA fell 4% to €115.1 million, with bookings falling 4% for the year after a 53% drop in the final five weeks of the financial year.
EDreams described the results as “good in the circumstances” and said the company’s strong balance sheet and liquidity put it in a positive position for the future.
The company had €144m of liquidity at the end of March, and this had dropped only slightly to €142 million in the last quarter, it said.
Dana Dunne, chief executive, said: “In these circumstances these are good results demonstrating the relative strength of our business. We have moved from a purely transactional model over the past five years to a leading, innovative e-commerce business of scale which is customer focused and mobile-led delivering a complete end to end experience.
“We are financially strong with sufficient liquidity to emerge from the crisis in good shape. Importantly, we have looked after our people and are best prepared to lead the new world with our motivated, experienced teams.”
He added: “Our customers have been and continue to be our utmost priority. Given the exceptional level of cancellations caused by Covid-19, we invested in additional frontline people to handle the unprecedented volume of customer queries.
“We believe best in class omni-channel customer service will be even more critical in a post Covid-19 world which is why we are fully committed to developing the industry leading OTA omni-channel customer service experience. This is in development and will be progressively rolled out in fiscal year 2021. We are committed more than ever to continue to invest in building the best customer experience solutions and offer our customers best-in-class service.”
Dunne said: “We anticipate substantial change to the way we travel. We are well positioned to thrive in the post Covid-19 era and seize the opportunity as customers migrate to our trusted brands in an accelerating digitalising world. As restrictions lift, I am confident that, in time, we can return to and supersede the strong trading performances of 2019 and the first two months of 2020.”