SRI LANKA - AITKEN SPENCE HOTEL HOLDINGS [AHUN] NET PROFIT UP

Feb 03, 2010 (LBO) - Sri Lanka's Aitken Spence Hotel Holdings made a December quarter net profit of 210 million rupees with total revenues up 20 percent to 1.98 billion rupees from a year ago.
According to accounts filed with the stock exchange, the net profit in the quarter, although nominally down 41 percent from a year ago, was actually higher without counting a capital gain made the previous year.

Analysts said that in the December quarter last year the hotel firm made a capital gain of 219 million rupees on the sale of its 95 percent stake in BIR Hotel Management, the holding company of Adaaran “Club” Bathala in the Maldives.

At a recurring level, Aitken Spence Hotel Holdings’ third quarter net profit this year was up 52 percent, they said.

Earnings per share for the quarter fell 42 percent to 5.38 rupees from a year ago.

In the nine months to December 31, 2009, net profit fell 60 percent to 105 million rupees while total revenue fell nine percent to 4.9 billion rupees from the year before.

A note to the accounts said six months of the period under review relates to the off-season of the tourism industry both in Sri Lanka and overseas.

The firm, a subsidiary of the Aitken Spence group, owns or manages a chain of hotels in Sri Lanka, the Maldive Islands, India and Oman.

According to a segmental analysis of the results, Aitken Spence Hotel Holdings’ Sri Lankan hotels made losses during the period, which however fell to 32 million from 88 million the year before.

The firm’s South Asian sector hotel profits fell to 198 million rupees from 469 million rupees.

Sri Lanka’s tourist industry, which had been in the doldrums for years, is recovering after the 30-year ethnic war ended last May.

Hotels have been reporting high occupancy in the current winter season that is just ending.

source - www.lbo.lk