Tui urges shareholders to vote to abandon London listing

The travel company said it had made record revenue and slashed its losses in the last three months of 2023.

August Graham
Tuesday 13 February 2024 04:55 EST
The travel group said it carried 3.5 million customers in the final quarter of 2023 (Andrew Matthews/PA)
The travel group said it carried 3.5 million customers in the final quarter of 2023 (Andrew Matthews/PA) (PA Wire)

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Travel company Tui has urged its shareholders to vote to abandon the company’s London listing and focus purely on Germany.

As the business revealed record first-quarter revenue it repeated its argument that the removal of its shares from trading in the UK would bring “understandable advantages”.

“In recent years, most of the liquidity of the TUI share has shifted to Germany,” the business said in a statement.

It added: “The termination of the listing in London would offer understandable advantages for investors and the company: Simplification of structures, improvement in liquidity and indexation, and support for EU airline ownership.”

We will retain the option to flexibly adjust capacity from the eastern to western Mediterranean should there be a further escalation of the conflict in this region which has a significant and prolonged effect on customer demand

Tui statement

Shareholders are set to vote on the plan to drop the London listing at a meeting later on Tuesday in Hanover, Germany.

Three quarters of the vote is needed for the plan to be approved.

The business also said its pre-tax loss was cut from 272.6 million euros (£232.3 million) in the final three months of 2022 to 103.1 million euros (£87.9 million) in the same period in 2023.

During that period Tui made its “highest ever revenues” of 4.3 billion euros (£3.7 billion), up 14.7% on a year earlier.

Around 3.5 million customers used Tui’s services, which include planes, cruise ships and package holidays.

That is a 6% increase on the year before, despite prices increasing.

“Average selling price continues to hold up well, highlighting the strong demand for our products and the consumers’ continued willingness to prioritise spend on travel and holidays,” the business said.

The business also said it was ready to divert resources away from the area close to Israel if conflict in the region should get more severe.

“We continue to monitor developments both in the Middle East and around the Arabian Peninsula,” Tui said.

“We will retain the option to flexibly adjust capacity from the eastern to western Mediterranean should there be a further escalation of the conflict in this region which has a significant and prolonged effect on customer demand.”

Chief executive Sebastian Ebel said: “We are on track, we are gaining customers and we are growing. We are accelerating our transformation quarter by quarter.

“We have goals that we are consistently implementing. In a persistently challenging environment, people’s high willingness to travel ensures strong economic development in all areas of the Group.

“This reiterates our expectations for the year as a whole: We want to increase our revenue by at least 10 per cent and our operating result by at least 25 per cent.”

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