2022 Interim Results

The first six months of 2022 were challenging, with the continuing impact of COVID-19 on Swire Properties' business. However, 2022 is also proving to be a year of exciting expansion for Swire Properties. The Company has focused on realising opportunities from the HK$100 billion investment plan which it announced in March. 

Swire Properties' reported profit attributable to shareholders in the first half of 2022 was HK$4,319 million, compared with HK$1,984 million in the first half of 2021.

Underlying profit attributable to shareholders decreased by HK$373 million from HK$4,513 million in the first half of 2021 to HK$4,140 million in the first half of 2022, primarily due to the reduction in profit from the sale of car parking spaces at the Taikoo Shing residential development in Hong Kong.

The board declared a first interim dividend for 2022 of HK$0.32 per share. This represents an increase of 3% from the first interim dividend paid in 2021.

The Cathay Pacific Group had an extremely difficult start to 2022. For more than two years, COVID-19 has had an unprecedented impact on global aviation with the situation often fluctuating between periods of relative improvement and significant setbacks as new variants of the virus have emerged. The first half of 2022 bore similarities to the first half of 2021. The spread of a new COVID-19 variant, Omicron, led to increasingly stringent travel and operational restrictions, most notably in Hong Kong and the Chinese Mainland, which severely constrained the Group’s ability to operate flights and greatly affected the demand for travel. 

The loss attributable to the Cathay Pacific Group, which includes Cathay Pacific, its subsidiaries and its associates, was HK$4,999 million in the first half of 2022 (2021 first half: loss of HK$7,565 million). Cathay Pacific’s loss after tax was HK$1,501 million in the first half of 2022 (2021 first half: loss of HK$5,031 million). The share of losses from subsidiaries was HK$1,015 million (2021 first half: loss of HK$1,224 million), and the share of losses from associates was HK$2,483 million (2021 first half: loss of HK$1,310 million).

Ongoing COVID-19-related travel restrictions and quarantine requirements severely constrained passenger operations. Passenger flight capacity decreased by 26.6%. Notwithstanding this, passenger revenue increased by 177.6% to HK$2,068 million in the first half of 2022 compared with the first half of 2021. Revenue passenger kilometres (RPK) increased by 129.7%. Cathay Pacific carried 335 thousand passengers in the first half of the year, an average of 1,853 passengers per day, which was 113.4% more than in the same period last year. The load factor was 59.2%, compared with 18.9% in the first half of 2021.

Cargo performance was similarly affected by restrictions and quarantine requirements for Hong Kong-based aircrew. Available cargo tonne kilometres (AFTK) decreased by 31.0%. Total tonnage decreased by 4.2% to 526 thousand tonnes. Cargo revenue was HK$12,148 million, an increase of 9.3% compared to the first half of 2021. Load factor was high at 75.8% (2021 first half: 81.4%), and yield increased 69.7% to HK$5.72.