Flight Centre Travel Group (ASX:FLT) has issued its full year results for FY24 to the Australian Securities Exchange. Please click here for the full announcement.
Flight Centre Travel Group has delivered a AU$320 million underlying PBT for 2024 fiscal year (FY24) – the result is a 131 per cent increase on the AU$139 million FY23 and is at the mid-point of FLT’s guidance range.
Total Transaction Value (TTV) reached a record AU$23.74 billion, slightly above the AU$23.7 billion FY19 result and a circa AU$1.8 billion year on year increase, with both corporate and leisure businesses delivering more than AU$1 billion year on year growth, and corporate achieving another record.
FLT’s global corporate business delivered a 44 per cent underlying PBT increase to AU$211 million, with Corporate Traveler contributing a record profit.
Corporate TTV increased by 10 per cent to a record AU$12.1 billion, as the business finished the year about 35 per cent larger than FY19 in a sector that has only recovered to circa 80 per cent of the pre-pandemic activity levels (Source: MIDT).
Comments by Charlene Leiss, The Americas President, Flight Centre Travel Group:
“It’s been another exciting year for Flight Centre Travel Group in the United States, with our corporate and leisure businesses experiencing strong growth and delivering increased revenue that has allowed us to significantly expand our footprint and grow our market share across the country.
“Throughout the last year, we’ve taken important steps in our flagship business travel divisions FCM Travel and Corporate Traveler that have enabled us to fast-track our expansion in The Americas and ensure we’re charting a path positive forward. We’ve secured key accounts, while prioritizing and deepening our connection with our existing clients. In the ever-changing business travel world, our ability to adapt and meet the needs of today’s business traveler has been paramount to our continued success.
“With Corporate Traveler, we started to strengthen our sales, customers success, and operational teams in our new East, Central, and West hubs, located around New York/Boston, Chicago, and Southern California respectively.
“This new regionalized and streamlined approach that we put in place this year has allowed us to better identify new opportunities throughout the country, as well as accelerate growth in our best performing sectors. We’re seeing exciting potential across the SME market in several different industries right now, including pharmaceutical, life sciences, finance and banking, technology, sports and entertainment, and more.
“On the FCM side, our teams continued to service our large multi-national and enterprise-level customers by blending our extensive global reach with deep local insights. In the last year, we further enhanced our productive operations work as we remain committed to increasing efficiency and optimizing our revenue. Our plans in this space are geared towards capitalizing on the strong corporate growth opportunities in the robust U.S. market.
“With each brand, we continue to invest in new, innovative technologies that help enrich the customer experience and drive value to new and existing clients, which has led to mass customer adoption of our revolutionary digital platforms, Corporate Traveler’s Melon and FCM Platform. Through our strategic relationship with our majority-owned TPConnects, we’ve strengthened our distribution technology to improve our NDC content offerings and will be able to provide our customers with a more personalized, dynamic, and competitive product.
“This past year was highlighted by the launch of our ‘AI Center of Excellence,’ a new global division that is focused on promoting and integrating artificial intelligence technologies into the operations of our business. The debut of our new AI division is just another example of the way we’re further pushing the boundaries of technology in travel in our corporate brands. Our continued advancements in technology will help set us apart and keep us at the forefront of the business travel industry for years to come.
“As part of our leisure growth efforts this past year, we’ve increased the focus on our independent and luxury sectors, through our new Envoyage brand and Scott Dunn. Our new global home for independent travel agents and agencies, Envoyage, will help us maximize our potential in the fast-growing independent travel space, while Scott Dunn will continue to position us to capitalize on the U.S. luxury travel market.
“Going forward, our diversified leisure business will also continue to serve the broader leisure market through our existing Liberty Travel wholly owned business models of storefronts and group travel, as well as the student population globally via our Massachusetts-based Student Universe OTA.
“We’re proud of our incredible work this year and we’re looking forward to even greater success in the year ahead.”
Comments by Chris Galanty, Global Corporate CEO, Flight Centre Travel Group:
“It’s been a robust year for the corporate pillar of the Flight Centre Travel Group with our flagship brands of Corporate Traveler and FCM Travel delivering record Total Transaction Value in a sector that has only recovered to circa 80 per cent of pre-COVID transaction volumes.
“This result has been driven by high customer retention rates and a large pipeline of new account wins, some of which have yet to be fully implemented, so we’ll see the benefits of these flow over the coming months once they begin trading.
“FCM Travel transaction volumes rose by 10 per cent year on year as the business continues to win and service large multi-national and enterprise-level accounts, while Corporate Traveler delivered a record profit globally, alongside winning managed and unmanaged SME and start-up accounts.
“Our blend of exceptional people and innovative technology continues to set us apart with both dedicated travel consultants and managers joining forces with the mass adoption of Corporate Traveler’s Melon online booking tool in the Northern Hemisphere and FCM Platform globally.
“We’ve continued to invest, and this year saw us launch our global corporate-specific AI Centre of Excellence that’s revolutionizing customer service, empowering our agents through smart automation, and is a key driver as we remain on track to deliver our Productive Operations project.
“We’ve also spent a lot of time in understanding the pain points of our customers and we’ve made significant investments to solve these problems – this has since allowed us to generate new revenue streams – meaning that we ultimately stay ahead of the curve.
“We’ve done an excellent job in building a solid foundation of stability, and as recent global industry-wide issues have proved, it always pays to have a travel management company on your side.
“The corporate arm of the Flight Centre Travel Group is a materially larger business than pre-COVID and we’re energized by the progress we’ve made in the Grow to Win space - and will continue to make - in productive operations in Flight Centre Travel Group’s journey to becoming a two per cent margin business.”