TAP posts record profit of €177.3 million in 2023

TAP posted a record net profit of €177.3 million — the highest profit ever registered by the company.

Profits were up €111.7 million on 2022 when the company posted €65.6 million; its first return to profit in five years.
By way of comparison, one year before the pandemic in 2019 the airline made a €95.6 million loss.
TAP CEO Luís Rodrigues said that the results confirmed the company’s continued road to recovery that it had embarked on in recent years.
TAP is likely to be privatised either this year or next, with Air France-KLM or the Lufthansa Group (Austrian Airlines-Brussels-Swiss-Eurowings) seen as the favoured candidates by the Portuguese Sate, and an Asian airline and the IAG group (British Airways-Iberia-Aer Lingus-Vueling) also in the running.
The company’s gross revenues stood at €4Bn, operational margins were “robust and resilient” with a clear deleveraging trajectory confirming the group’s solidity.
Nevertheless, the 2023 results could have been better if the company hadn’t ended the 4th quarter with a loss of €26.2 million because of costs on staff and higher traffic operational costs reflecting higher activity levels.
However, these were offset by a reduction in fuel costs because the price of jet fuel has come down.
In 2023, TAP carried 15.9 million passengers, an increase in 15.2% in relation to 2022, achieving 93% of the numbers achieved in 2019. At the same time, the company’s capacity to exceed pre-pandemic levels in 2019 was 101%, an increase of 14.9% on 2022.
The Load Factor increased 0.8% like-for-like to 80.8% in 2023, an 0.7% improvement on 2019.
The airline also reported operational revenues of €4.2Bn, an increase of 27.8% on 2019. In 2023, Recurrent EBITDA rose to €871.6 million with a margin of 20.7%.
With these results, the group ended 2023 with a net liquidity position of €789.4 million and a significant Net Financial Debt/EBITDA ratio of 2.6x, showing a remarkable progress in relation to a 3.5x ratio posted at the end of 2022.