All Nippon Airways Co. said Monday its net profit in the October-December quarter fell 25 percent from a year earlier to 5.1 billion yen, due to extraordinary costs of 6.1 billion yen, which included the move to a new terminal in Tokyo's Haneda airport.
The nation's second-largest carrier reported a 30 percent rise in operating profit to 21.4 billion yen during the third quarter of fiscal 2004, thanks to rigorous cost-cutting efforts. ANA said it succeeded in accelerating by one year introduction of a three-year cost-reduction plan under which it aims to slash 30 billion yen through March 2006.
"We will continue our restructuring and cost-saving initiatives while maintaining efforts to secure an increase in revenue," despite an unfavorable business environment of rising fuel costs and the yen's surge against the dollar, Tomohiro Hidema, senior vice president of ANA, said in a statement.
Sales grew 3.2 percent to 323 billion yen, led by strong demand in international business travel to North America and Europe and a recovery in the number of passengers to Asia.
The industry had seen the number of international passengers sharply decline in the previous fiscal year due to the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome in Asia and the war in Iraq.
The number of international passengers in the quarter rose 13.6 percent year-on-year to 1.05 million. Although large-scale typhoons caused many cancellations of domestic flights in October, the number of domestic passengers remained almost flat at 11.3 million yen.
ANA said its domestic and international operations are expected to continue to grow in the remaining quarter.
The carrier has revised upward its earning projections for the full year to March 31, and now forecasts a net profit of 25 billion yen, up 79 percent from the initial forecast, an operating profit of 70 billion yen, up 25 percent, on sales of 1.28 trillion yen, up 1.2 percent.