From another broker
\Virgin Atlantic underlying result very similar to BA - Yesterday Virgin Atlantic announced that pretax profits nearly doubled during YE Feb 2009 despite high fuel and the economic slowdown. Pretax profits doubled to £68.4m from £34.8m. Having seen the P&L, we now know that the continuing operating result of the company actually fell from £44m in FY08 to £25m in FY09. Moreover, Virgin;s FY09 result was boosted by a £68m exchange rate gain on retranslation of USD balances held in the short term to meet future USD obligations. In FY09 there was a £2m loss in this line. Stripping out this non-cash item, which we would not describe as operating, yields an underlying operating loss in FY09 of £42m (-1.6% margin) compared to an FY08 operating profit of £46m (+1.9% margin). This tells us that Virgin;s FY09 margin is only very slightly better than BA;s which we would put down to the timing of the year end, missing out March, which demonstrated weaker trading than Feb for the quoted airlines and which also lacked Easter.