Helloworld has revealed that 125 of its franchise travel agencies have closed their shops due to the impact of COVID over the past few months.
The Australia and New Zealand retail chain – ASX code HLO – made the revelation when announcing a $50m equity raise of new fully paid shares, which was successfully completed today.
It says the money will see the business through to the end of 2022, assuming no change to the present operating environment.
Helloworld also told investors that:
- Bookings are currently running at 10% of previous total turnover value (TTV)
- It expects a progressive increase in bookings from September
- Helloworld has suspended all franchise and marketing fees for its members until 31 March 2021.
- Corporate business is picking up due to the lifting of certain domestic travel restrictions.
- 1200 of its employees are receiving employment subsidies from the Australian and New Zealand governments.
Helloworld has more than 2300 travel agents in its network. For now.
ends.
I was on a flight from Joburg to Perth mid-March returning home, and sat next to a Helloworld franchisee returning from a safari famil… I think that week HLO shares had dropped to sub $1 that day, and I broke the news to him across the aisle as he’d been offline the whole trip. It wasn’t funny. Neither was sitting on the tarmac waiting at JHB while the SA Airways maintenance crew spent the next hour fixing the plane GPS so we could get across the Indian Ocean. Nonetheless the plane took off, we drunk a lot of gin and tonics, and all got home safely. Hope he’s doing ok.