Royal Jordanian CEO Update
Royal Jordanian CEO, Stefan Pichler, gives his views on his priorities for the airline, its turnaround plan and capital increase and growth prospects.
Transcript
Stefan Pichler:Well, basically, it's a nice airline. It's in a market niche in the Levant. It is not broken at all. It just needs to have management who do the things right rather than do the right things, and that's what we're working on. So right now, we see a lot of room for improvement. We see also a strong recovery in the last 4 months. We are not going to announce our results now, but in 2-3 weeks' time, third quarter results, and you'll see a strong rebound for Royal Jordanian. We also have, in the last 4 months, developed a turnaround plan which has been approved by the board a couple of days ago, so now we're starting implementing it. So I think Royal Jordanian in the future has a place, has a market niche, a sustainable market niche to be profitable in a sustainable way, and we are going to achieve it. Well, I think we have a realistic chance to turn our fortune this financial year, which means by the end of '17. I hope, and this is with all modesty, I hope that from an operational part of the story, we might return to profitability by the end of this year. We are right now in the process of a capital increase which has been subscribed by the government, and that's in execution. That allows for one tranche to be injected immediately, which is happening right now. and for another tranche next year. Then we are recapitalized the way that we are aligned with all covenants. Well, my job is to enhance profitability. I try to avoid to compete with non-commercial airlines surrounding us. I think we have a properly defined market share in Oman. We will not overcapitalize. We will grow modestly with the market, and we will try to get our cost, our unit cost down. We try to enhance our unit revenues, which is feasible cost because Royal Jordanian in the past had— was operating with load factors of the low 60s, so we have a lot of opportunity to improve it. Thank you.
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