Dart Group announced their interims this morning. Looks like it has been a successful summer. Here are the relevant extracts.
Dart Group PLC, the aviation and distribution group, announces its interim
results for the six months ended 30 September 2006
CHAIRMAN'S STATEMENT
I am pleased to report on the Group's trading for the six months ended 30
September 2006. Profit before tax, goodwill amortisation and exceptional items amounted to £22.1m (2005 restated: £14.7m) whilst profit before tax but after goodwill amortisation and exceptional items was £24.0m (2005 restated: £18.1m). The usual pattern of seasonal profitability for the Group is likely to be repeated this year, with Jet2.com being profitable in the summer and loss making in the winter.
The Group has material exposures to both the US Dollar exchange rate and the price of aviation fuel. The Group's treasury operations manage the risks of
these exposures. In accordance with our current treasury policy, both of these exposures have been fully hedged for the current financial year. For the year ending 31 March 2008, 76% of the forecast US Dollar exposure has been hedged together with 57% of the jet fuel tonnage.
Jet2.com, the low-cost airline, has had an encouraging summer's business from its six Northern bases which, whilst serving separate catchment areas, have considerable synergies in terms of marketing and operations. Predominately a leisure-based airline, the company is benefiting from its customers' growing propensity to fly on flexible scheduled services rather than with traditional charter carriers for their leisure needs.
The owned aircraft fleet consists of 21 Boeing 737-300s and five Boeing
757-200s. Additional capacity is leased in as required. Six of the Boeing
737-300s are "Quick Change" versions enabling them to also operate night mail services for Royal Mail.
We plan to expand both fleets during the winter months in order to serve the
increased range of destinations the company has announced for next summer. These include seven new routes from Manchester, five each from Leeds-Bradford, Belfast and Newcastle, four from Blackpool and two from Edinburgh. Several of these are to existing destinations already served from other bases and their introduction will considerably increase the choice of city breaks and sun offered from each base and enhance the company's overall marketing presence. Full details can be found on the company's website,
Ancillary revenue from associated commercial services such as onboard sales and hotels, car hire, etc., booked through our sales website have shown good growth in spend per passenger during the year and major efforts are being made to build on these and to develop other revenue opportunities.
Our strategy continues to be to concentrate and grow Jet2.com's operations in the North, building familiarity with the brand and delivering an attractive,
low-cost service. This is a competitive market but, with innovation, we believe there are many future opportunities.
ENDS
No mention of a new base explicitly, but the extra destinationsthere announced thuis far don't require a massive fleet expansion - much of it being served by better utilisation and absorbing capacity from dropped routes (e.g. MAN-EDI). So a combination of fleet growth and hints at further growth in the North might be a clue that something is afoot.
Note also that as of today they have retimed the NCL-MJV sector for the summer which appears now to be from a NCL based machine rather than the previous times which were on a MJV nightstopping a/c.
Finally, aren't there only 4 new routes on offer from LBA next summer (LEI, VLC, TLS, KRK) and not the 5 mentioned above.
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