MACROASIA Corp. said it expects higher revenues this year due to increased airport traffic volumes as mobility continues to ease up.

“We foresee that 2022 revenues will be on an upward trend compared to 2021, as recent data shows that travel movements have now increased,” MacroAsia President and Chief Operating Officer Eduardo Luis T. Luy said during the company’s annual stockholders’ meeting on May 12.

The company managed to cut its attributable net loss for the first quarter of 2022 to P26.88 million from a loss of P235.18 million in the same period in 2021.

“While the core business segments of the group continue to be impacted by the downturn in air travel due to coronavirus-related quarantine and airport restrictions since the onset of the pandemic, 2022 volume developments now trend towards recovery in the airline industry,” the company said in its first-quarter report released last week.

“The number of flights and meals served are slowly improving as travel and safety protocol restriction measures are slowly eased,” it added.

The company’s total revenues for the period reached P710.27 million, up by 79% from P397.38 million in the same period in 2021.

It said that revenues from in-flight catering contributed 39% of the total revenues. “This is brought about by the increase in the number of meals served to airline and non-airline clients, from 577,663 in 2021 to 2,189,174 meals in 2022,” the company noted.

Meanwhile, revenues from ground-handling and aviation services increased by 42% to P307.90 million in the first three months of the year from P216.73 million in the same period a year earlier.

“Flights handled increased by a total of 6,921 flights (42%), from 16,345 in 2021 to 23,266 flights in the current year,” it said.

The Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) has said domestic traffic at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) surged to 3.17 million in the first three months of the year as travel restrictions were dialed back.

Domestic passenger traffic — arrivals as well as departures — were significantly higher than the year-earlier total of more than one million passengers, according to an operations report posted on MIAA’s website.

Domestic traffic was still running well behind the total of 4.48 million posted in the first quarter of 2020, which included the two months before the declaration of the state of emergency.

International passenger traffic at NAIA increased to 1.03 million in the first quarter of 2022 from 503,331 a year earlier. In the first three months of 2020, international passengers at NAIA were at 4.35 million.

MacroAsia shares closed 0.21% lower at P4.70 apiece on Friday. — Arjay L. Balinbin

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