BURSSELS, Belgium, Jan. 18, 2002 (PRIMEZONE) -- Virgin Express (Euronext Brussels:VIRE) (Nasdaq:VIRGY) reported the following scheduled services traffic results for 2001:
Highlights -- Total number of flown scheduled passengers in 2001: 2.4 million -- Overall load factor up to 81.7% but load factor down in 4Q -- Total number of internet bookings: +16.9% -- Growth of GDS sales -- Appointment of Sang-Chul Mathot as Chief Financial Officer Scheduled services: 2000 2001 ASK (in millions) 3,361.0 2,542.4 RPK (in millions) 2,465.2 2,076.9 Load factor 73.3% 81.7% Passengers 2,975,852 2,422,736
Following a restructuring of our business at the end of 2000, the fundamentally unprofitable time charter business was abandoned and emphasis was put on profitable scheduled operations and ad hoc charters. Due to the reduction in flight capacity passenger numbers were down but the overall 2001 load factor increased by 8.4 percentage points to 81.7%.
Passengers booking directly with Virgin Express continued to grow after Sabena was declared bankrupt on November 7. However, yields in November and the first half of December have suffered as a result of DAT's promotional prices on new tickets and DAT having to accept passenger tickets from the former Sabena.
Load factors have also been lower in the last two months of the year following the problems caused by the events of September 11, the cancellation of our wet lease arrangement with Sabena, and the opening of five new routes.
Scheduled services 4Q 2000 4Q 2001 Load factor 74.9% 71.7% Passengers 707,653 507,802
More detailed information with regards to traffic statistics can be found at the "Traffic Figures" webpage (http://www.virgin-express.com/new/traffic_res.asp).
Websales
In the year 2001 total internet bookings climbed 16.9% compared to 2000 and websales turnover reached EUR 20.1 million. Virgin Express remains Belgium's largest internet retailer.
2000 2001
Internet bookings 292,310 341,817
Internet revenue (EUR millions) 17.8 20.1
% of direct sales 26.2% 24.6%
We expect that with the introduction of the multilingual booking engine more non-native English speakers will feel comfortable buying seats via the internet leading to a growing market share for Virgin Express.
For more information about Virgin Express websales: visit http://www.virgin-express.com/new/distribution_channels.asp
GDS Sales
In early 2001 Virgin Express entered all four major Global Distribution Systems (GDS) by means of a new low cost booking system, called the Basic Booking Product (BBP). Targeted at the rapidly growing "no frills" segment of the market, BBP allows Virgin Express to expand its distribution in a cost-effective manner, comparable to the handling cost of a booking via the Virgin Express call center.
The expansion of our distribution network via Galileo, Worldspan, Sabre and Amadeus has drastically improved awareness of and accessibility to our product by travel agencies. The travel trade in particular has reacted enthusiastically to this new development in the low fare airline segment leading to a significant increase of sales in continental markets.
In the year 2001 GDS bookings accounted for 13.2% of total sales with turnover reaching EUR 13.9 million. More importantly, the average GDS yield is 32.7% higher than the average yield of the websales.
2001
GDS bookings 169,195
GDS revenue (EUR millions) 13.9
The proportion of GDS sales continues to grow and now accounts for 21.1% of all bookings and 24.8% of all revenue.
Appointment of a New Chief Financial Officer
As from January 21, 2002 Mr. Sang-Chul Mathot will replace Mr. Laurent Jossart who will be leaving the company to take up the position of Managing Director of Charleroi Airport 50km south of Brussels.
Sang-Chul Mathot is a graduate of the University of Namur (Belgium) and holds a Masters degree in Economics. He started his professional career at Arthur Andersen, where he worked for 4 years as auditor. Before joining Virgin Express in August 2000 as Financial Controller Mr. Mathot worked for Sugro where he held the same responsibilities.