Strong rebound seen in international travel

Tourists in Langkawi

KUALA LUMPUR: The formation of the Langkawi quarantine-free travel bubble and the Malaysia-Singapore vaccinated travel lane (VTL) last month could lead to a strong rebound in international passenger movements in December.

In November, Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB) posted a 630.2% year-on-year (y-o-y) growth in passenger movements in Malaysia to 2.3 million, supported by the uplift of the domestic travel ban effective Oct 11.

On the international front, November’s passenger movements rose 91% y-o-y to 149,000 following the relaxation of travel standard operating procedures (SOPs) for fully vaccinated Malaysian residents and the establishment of the Malaysia-Singapore VTL.

However, TA Securities Research noted that the performance of the international passenger movements was subpar compared to the domestic sector as most countries were still closing their borders and the quarantine requirements were still intact in November.

CKICK TO ENLARGE

Having said that, the research house expects a strong rebound in December post-establishments of Langkawi quarantine-free travel bubble on Nov 16 and VTL with Singapore on Nov 2.

“For the first 11 months of this year, the decline in passenger movements moderated to 69.4% in November from 78.4% a month ago, to 7.6 million.

“This was below our expectations, accounting for 39% of our full-year forecast. The weaker performance was largely due to lower-than-expected movements in the international sector,” it added.

According to MAHB, the overall aircraft movements at KL International Airport (KLIA) increased by 178.2% y-o-y with strong performance in the domestic and international sectors.

The average load factor for KLIA was 59% in November, which was 4.7% points higher than October.

Moving forward, TA Securities Research reduced its 2021 passenger movement assumptions by 46.9% to 10.2 million from 19.3 million as the reopening of the country has been slower than expected.

The widespread of new Covid-19 variant Omicron has closed the country’s borders once again, barring travellers from 48 countries categorised in the first and second schedule from entering Langkawi.

As such, the research house believes the government’s determination in reopening the borders or the “living with the virus” mindset is still fluid.

“This could be a setback for the tourism industry for the benefit of Malaysia as a whole,” it noted.

For 2022, the research house has cut its passenger movements drastically by 31.6% to 75.9 million from 114.2 million previously, as the hope for pre-pandemic recovery has been dented by the Omicron threat.

“Now, we assume financial year 2022 (FY22) movements from the international segment to be at only 32.9% of 2019 levels while the domestic volume to fully recover to 2019 levels.

“As far as earnings are concerned, we adjust our FY21 (ending Dec 31), FY22 and FY23 profits to negative RM829.5mil, negative RM330.8mil and RM366.3mil respectively, from negative RM743.9mil, negative RM437.6mil and RM353.2mil previously,” it said.

Following the change in earnings projections, TA Securities Research has cut MAHB’s discounted cashflow valuation to RM7.24 from RM7.49 previously.

“We continue to like MAHB for its operational agility and disciplined cost management, which are important to get itself out of the woods. We are maintaining a ‘buy’ call on MAHB,” it said.