Things looking up for MYT.

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Member for

24 years 2 months

Posts: 1,109

CEO Progress Report
Peter Mc Hugh

Dear Colleagues,

This morning we are making an announcement which gives an update on how we are trading and progress with restructuring of our debts. I want to share with you the main points from that announcement.

Trading

At the time of last year’s annual results, we committed to delivering a significant improvement in performance for this financial year (2003-2004). As many of you will recall, we have already shown an improvement for the first half of this financial year, covering winter 2003-04. Our operating losses went down from £282.7 million to £149.6 million (before exceptional items and goodwill). In addition, MyTravel Northern Europe returned to profit, while MyTravel North America more than tripled its first half operating profits.

We now believe that the operating result for the Company for the full financial year to September will be approaching break-even – compared with a loss of £358 million last year.

The UK division will be profitable for the summer 2004 season. This will not be enough to outweigh the UK’s first half loss. However, for the year to 30 September 2004, while the UK will still show a loss, its performance will be significantly better than in 2003.

Both MyTravel Northern Europe and MyTravel North America are having excellent summers. They will both be profitable for the current year.

I’m sure you will agree that this is great news and shows that we are making good progress on turning MyTravel around. That said, the financial year has not finished yet (it ends on 31st October), and there is still work to be done to ensure these expectations become reality. All of us have a role to play in getting in as much profit as possible before then – and this is what we need to focus on.

Restructuring

You will also remember that we announced at the Annual General Meeting in March the Board’s intention to rebuild the financial position of the Group. Today we are meeting with our lenders to discuss proposals for the restructuring of our balance sheet. The proposals look at how their debt can be converted into shares in MyTravel, leaving the company with very much less debt than we have currently.

While our current debt arrangements are in place until May 2006, the Board believes that it is in our best interests to complete the restructuring earlier. We don’t know exactly how the restructuring will convert the debt into shares but it is likely that it will result in very significant dilution for the existing holders of shares and bonds. The final proposal will require the agreement of our creditors, the holders of the Company’s convertible bonds and our shareholders.

Looking ahead

I know that many of you will have questions about the restructuring and what the final year-end figures are likely to be. You can appreciate that it will be difficult to go into more detail than I’ve explained in this Progress Report.

You may see speculation in the press, especially about who will finish up owning what proportion of MyTravel shares. This is just guesswork on the part of journalists and commentators - there are no firm proposals on this at the present time.

Today’s news shows we are advancing with our objective of returning MyTravel back to financial health. This is an essential step on our way to sustained profitability. Everyone should feel encouraged by the progress we are making towards our goal.

Peter McHugh,
CEO, MyTravel Group plc

Original post

Member for

20 years 9 months

Posts: 2,114

thats good i have only praise for mytravel after having two holidays with then one being this summer on a suncrusies sunbird meledy cruise and alcudia pins holiday they have been excellent from checkin to flight crew to pursers on the ship glad they are starting to financially get better and in the not too distant future cut the losses to £0 and even profit :eek: :D
so gladf to see they are doing well :D

Member for

20 years 10 months

Posts: 9,401

Yes EAL you left. If you didnt intend to leave for such a short time, why did you make such a big deal of it?

Good news Lyndon, glad all is going better. :)