Commenting on the results , JosÌ© Antonio TazÌ?n
, President and CEO of Amadeus
, said:

 

“While Amadeus was adversely affected in the second quarter 2003 by the conflict in the Middle East and the SARS epidemic, as was the entire travel industry, our overall performance in the quarter allows us to believe that we will conclude the year positively. For the full year 2003, we expect net income to grow over 5% to €155m.

Total bookings invoiced by Amadeus for the period rose 1.1% to 104.4 million. With 86 million air bookings registered between April and June, Amadeus clearly continues to lead the sector in number of airline reservations, processing 10% more than its nearest competitor . In terms of travel agency air bookings, Amadeus raised its world market share year on year by 1.7 percentage points to 28.8%, as the only reservation system to have increased market share globally and in every region .

For the whole quarter, the overall number of reservations fell in all regions, except Central and Eastern Europe, where we registered almost 10% growth. In June, the travel industry was clearly recovering on a global scale, with reservations growing in all regions except South America. This positive trend has continued through July.

The total revenue for the period contracted by 1%, impacted by a 9.5% decrease in global air reservations. Non-reservation revenue grew strongly by 13.7%, mainly due to our expanding IT services line, and, as a result of our business diversification strategy, now represents almost 25% of our total turnover.

Net income, excluding special items, decreased by 17.2% to €37.8m while EBITDA remained steady. These figures are by far the strongest reported in our sector and allow us to remain confident that full year results for 2003 will show a clear improvement on 2002.”

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