SA Express plunges into the red, liquidity and solvency at risk
Cash-strapped regional airline South African Express, which has debt-to-equity ratio of about 600%, is preparing an application to submit to the Department of Public Enterprises for a recapitalisation, chief financial officer Mark Shelley said in Parliament on Wednesday. The airline is already reliant on a government guarantee of R1.1bn to keep it going. Parliament’s public enterprises committee learned in a briefing by SA Express executives that the company had an unaudited R234m loss in the 2016-17 financial year after a R16.9m profit the previous year. Revenue of R2.4bn was posted compared with the previous R2.5bn, which translated into a net operating loss of R104.7m compared with the previous profit of R27m. The results are provisional and will only be finalised at the end of July. Passenger numbers fell from 1.3-million to 1.23-million in the 2016-17 year, while flights operated declined from 33,234 in 2015-16 to 31,206 in 2016-17. Acting CEO Victor Xaba told parliamentarians ...
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