ESTONIA. Tallink Grupp today reported second-quarter results to 30 June, with shop and restaurant sales (including those onboard and on land) falling by -81.6% year-on-year to €26.2 million. The cruise-ferry company posted a decline of -85% in passenger traffic in the period, caused by travel suspensions and border closures due to COVID-19. Overall revenue fell by -74.6% to €65 million.
With limited (mainly cargo) sailings in April and May, and a return to service in June, passenger numbers dropped by an unprecedented -99% on the company’s Latvia-Sweden route, -97% on the Estonia-Sweden routes, -93% on the Finland-Sweden routes and -77% on the Estonia-Finland routes.
EBITDA for the second quarter of 2020 was €2.4 million, down by -95.2%, with a pre-tax loss of €27.4 million compared to a pre-tax profit of €23 million in Q2 2019.
Investments in the quarter, although reduced and limited, amounted to €14 million, including the purchase of the ro-pax vessel Sailor, upgrading work on Silja Serenade and the roll-out of the first four Burger King restaurants in Estonia (managed under franchise by Tallink).
Tallink Grupp CEO Paavo Nõgene said: “The second quarter of 2020 was a completely unprecedented period not only in our company’s history, but world history in general due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As we have said throughout the crisis, it was the global tourism industry that was hit by the pandemic first and the hardest, so the results we are reporting for this challenging period today, will not surprise anyone.
“While the first quarter of this year still held much promise for the year and its results were mainly negatively impacted by the events of the last two weeks of March, then the picture for the second quarter is a complete mirror image of first quarter with only the last two weeks of June bringing some relief and first positive signs and developments after the easing of some of the travel restrictions in our region.
“Considering the turmoil we have all been through in the last five months, our second quarter results are perhaps even marginally more positive than we expected, but of course, these are not the results we were expecting to report when we were making plans and budgets for 2020. However, in these times we find ourselves in right now, we must take every positive and build on this as best we can.
“Right now we are extremely focused on making the two months of the summer season as successful as possible in these circumstances and making preparations based on various scenarios for the autumn and winter months. With so much uncertainty still around, our team is flexible, focused and ready to implement any scenario possible as quickly and swiftly as the pandemic situation changes and national rules and regulations allow. We have made changes to our route network extremely fast and are currently very flexible as a business and ready to react to any future scenarios.”
