Lufthansa: another good trick. 2Q2013 operating result deteriorates and improves at the same time

In a somewhat confusing earnings release on 2-Aug-2013, Lufthansa said that its 'normalised' 2Q2013 operating result had improved by EUR169 million year-on-year to reach EUR438 million, although its reported operating result declined by EUR163 million to EUR431 million. The passenger segment (and each of its three component airlines Lufthansa, SWISS and Austrian), the logistics segment and MRO all saw improvements in their underlying operating results.

The SCORE profit improvement programme, which aims at improving the annual operating result by EUR1.5 billion from 2011 to give a result of EUR2.3 billion in 2015, is now into its second year. There have already been a number of high profile initiatives, most notably 'new Germanwings' taking on Lufthansa's short/medium-haul non-hub traffic. However, there is still a sense of it being a 'work in progress' and Lufthansa's unchanged FY2013 target to achieve an operating profit above last year's reported figure of EUR524 million leaves much ground still to be covered.