14th Apr 2020 09:58
(Alliance News) - National Express Group PLC on Tuesday withdrew its final dividend for 2019 due to "exceptional" circumstances created by the Covid-19 pandemic and said that it has seen a sharp fall in revenue due to pausing of services due to government-imposed lockdowns.
Shares in the company were up 6.8% at 276.05 pence each in London.
The public transport operator said that, before the coronavirus outbreak, the first two months of 2020 delivered significant year-on-year revenue growth of 17%. However, since then the company has seen a decline in revenue as services have been withdrawn.
National Express has temporarily suspended all National Express coach services in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.
Nonetheless, the company said overall revenue for the three months to March 31 was still up 8.9% year-on-year in constant currency and 9.4% on a reported basis. The US division saw 11% constant currency revenue growth, while the UK unit recorded a 1.7% drop.
"We have acted swiftly and decisively to protect the business and made good progress with national governments and customers, as well as cost management across the group. Even in this unprecedented lockdown, we continue to generate positive earnings before interest, depreciation and amortisation and cashflow," the FTSE 250-listed company explained.
National Express currently has over GBP200 million of cash in addition to undrawn committed facilities of over GBP1 billion. It intends to keep dividend payments under review and hopes to restart payouts when it is appropriate to do so.
Chief Executive Dean Finch said: "We continue to make important progress in dealing with the impact of the pandemic across our businesses. We are combining self-help with productive discussions with customers, national governments and relationship banks.
"National Express went in to this crisis with revenue up strongly across the group. I remain confident that we will emerge out of this unprecedented period with our portfolio of strong assets ready to return to delivering industry-leading service to our customers".
By Tapan Panchal; [email protected]
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