RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – LATAM Airlines, Latin America’s largest air transport group, announced Thursday that despite the severe travel restrictions and contraction in demand due to the pandemic, it closed the first quarter of the year with US$2.6 billion of available liquidity.
“We have closed a difficult first quarter,” said the company’s chief financial officer, Ramiro Alfonsín.
The group managed to reduce its costs by 43.3% during this period, efforts that, according to its executives, kept the company healthy in the face of the crisis caused by the covid-19 pandemic.
“We believe that the right decisions have been made to give continuity to the group, and we are already noticing it,” said Latam Airlines Group CEO Roberto Alvo.
“We closed a tough first quarter with healthy liquidity levels and significant cost reductions. The call is to continue working as we have done so far because the impact of the pandemic is not yet over,” he added.
According to data published by the company, total revenues for the first quarter of 2021 amounted to US$913.2 million, a decrease of 61.2% compared to the same tranche in 2020, but partially offset by an increase in cargo revenues.
All in all, LATAM recorded a loss in operating income, equivalent to US$355.7 million.
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In 2020, with the economic uncertainty generated by the pandemic, the airline group suffered a severe blow to its revenues, which fell by 58.4%, a net loss of US$4.5 billion.
Such was the decline in its coffers that last May, the company, born in 2012 from the merger between Chile’s Lan and Brazil’s Tam, filed for bankruptcy under U.S. law to restructure its financial liabilities and boost its fleet.
Before the health crisis, LATAM operated close to 1,400 daily flights to 145 destinations in 26 countries, and 332 aircraft made up its fleet capacity.