OUR MINISTER for the Olympics Michael Ring will be disappointed to learn that there has been no dividend from the London sporting jamboree for Aer Lingus. So says its chief executive, Christoph Mueller.
“The Olympics is very disturbing because obviously a lot of corporates in London have advised their employees not to do travel or to receive visitors,” the German told me on Tuesday following the publication of the airline’s interim results.
“So the business segment during the Olympics is really down and we cannot compensate that with private consumption.”
The timing of the Olympics even forced Aer Lingus to postpone its usual post-results investor roadshow, which would usually involve a lot of meetings in London.
How big will the Olympic drag be on Aer Lingus’s bottom line this year?
“It will have an impact but we stick to our [interim] statement that we will be at least as good as 2011 in operating profit.”
That’s code for the fact that he expects to beat last year’s €49 million operating profit, which would be a gold medal performance in the current economic climate.