Japan's ANA says H1 profit dives 45.7%, slashes FY outlook

Japan's ANA Holdings, parent of All Nippon Airways, on Wednesday slashed its full-year net-profit forecast by two-thirds as first-half profit nosedived due to higher fuel costs and the delayed delivery of a modified Dreamliner.

The company now expects a net profit of 15 billion yen ($153 million) for the year to March 2014, down from the 45 billion yen it projected in April.

ANA Holdings said April-September's net profit fell to 20.07 billion yen, down 45.7 percent from the same period last year.

"Passenger unit cost and numbers fell short of initial targets and there were delays in receiving new aircraft that caused delays in establishing new international routes and adding flights," the company said in a statement.

While the statement did not name Boeing's glitch-plagued Dreamliner, for which it is the world's biggest customer, ANA was hit hard by the grounding of the high-tech aircraft this year.

The company also said its budget unit AirAsia Japan "did not perform as well as expected".

AirAsia Japan is a joint venture with Malaysia-based AirAsia, which is due to end services under the name by Thursday owing to a spat over business practices.

ANA has rebranded the carrier Vanilla Air, which is to begin flights in December.

Regarding revenue for the second half, it said it expected prices on domestic routes to continue to fall.

In addition, "the yen continued to weaken in the first six months, which increased costs for fuel and other dollar-denominated outlays, causing expenditures to exceed initial estimates", it said.

"ANA has no choice but to assume that (the) yen will continue to weaken further in the second half, and must also assume that fuel costs will increase".

It also cut its operating-profit forecast to 60 billion yen from 110 billion yen and revenue estimate to 1.58 trillion yen from 1.61 trillion yen.

In April-September, ANA Holdings' operating profit fell 42.5 percent from a year earlier to 43.31 billion yen despite a 5.9 percent rise in revenue to 797.63 billion yen.

SOURCE