Kenya Airways Steady as it Cuts Its Half Year Loss to 3.8 Billion Shillings

Kenya Airways appears to be on a positive recovery trajectory after it announced a 3.8 billion shillings half-year net loss as compared to what was recorded last year at the same time.

The latest results by Kenya Airways represents a 20.5 percent improvement from last year where the airline registered 4.8 billion shillings in losses.

Earlier this week, the national carrier suspended the trading of its shares at the Nairobi Security Exchange for 10 days in what it termed as to allow the splitting of the shares. In the half-year financial results, the revenues have gone down by 0.4 percent to 54.52 billion shillings compared to 54.75 billion shillings that were posted at the same period in 2016.

Kenya Airways has been recovering after registering the biggest loss of more than 27 billion shillings years ago. Already various plans have been put down in conjunction with the government to help the airline recover. In this year’s half-year results, the airline realized an improvement in the number of passengers by 3.3 percent to 2.3 million during the period under review.

The intra-Africa traffic of Kenya Airways improved by 6.7 percent, but the electioneering period has a dampening effect towards the end of the period under review.

In the current development, the Government of Kenya increased its stake in Kenya Airways PLC to 48.9 percent from 29.8 percent and 11 commercial banks forming KQ Lenders Company acquiring 38.1 percent, Air France and KLM 7.8 percent and other shareholders 5.2 percent.

“The government of Kenya shall acquire effective control in Kenya Airways and it shall make an application to the Capital Markets Authority for exemption from the take-over requirements in compliance with the Take-overs regulations,” Treasury Secretary Henry Rotich.

Kenya Airway is expected to be completely out of the woods and back to the profit-making platform early next year.