Lars Venus, the owner and chairman, says he is not satisfied with the result.
In the presentation of the spring’s accounting figures, the team did not hide the fact that there were some difficult times after the epidemic.
“2020 is a challenging year for the Venus Group,” it said in a statement.
Hotels had to close for most of the year as a result of the restrictions, which caused huge losses to the group.
Profit before tax – NOK 986 million, down from NOK 1.4 billion in 2019. Operating income fell to NOK 1.4 billion in 2020, down from NOK 2.8 billion in the previous year.
– This is the result of partially closed hotels and low-income hotels and weak Crohn’s, Venus says.
The Venus Group owns 28 hotels with 12,000 rooms, including Novae’s second largest hotel in Northern Europe; Radisson Plaza in Oslo. The Big Hotel, along with two hotels in Gardarmon, are the only Norwegian hotels remaining in the portfolio of Lars Venus and the Venus Group.
The company also owns a ski resort in Oppal. The ski business also suffered losses as it closed before the crucial Easter season last year.
Not only were the hotels closed but it also caused huge losses to the hotel team. Operating profit ended in positive profit, and the negative financial result increased the total loss by almost one billion kroner.
Since the bulk of the company’s funding is in foreign currency and the financial statements are in Norwegian kroner, the weakening of the krone has had a severe impact on the company’s financial assets.
Net financial income ended at $ 1.03 billion in 2020, up from $ 442 million in 2019.
The reason is that most of our debts are in foreign currency, where we normally have higher returns. With a weaker crone, this has a huge impact on unrealistic currency losses, says Venus.
When the krone weakened, foreign currency became more expensive for the Norwegians, and serving foreign debt became more expensive. On the other hand, hotel revenue from abroad goes the opposite way: they are more valuable. But when the hotels of the Venus Group have to close, they will get little benefit from this monetary effect.
Thus, the result was ugly for the hotel team.
Hotels are still hard hit by the epidemic, and the company writes that 2021 will be a challenging year.
But the results are expected to be significantly better than 2020. The team still believes it will be “a little while” to get back to the 2018/2019 level.
Lars Venus had said before His hotels «have low loan-to-ratio and most hotels are located in the center of Europe’s largest cities, are above the market with aggression and average prices, and hotels are run by solid operators with strong brands.
– How do you see the coming years?
-We have a long-term and low debt-to-debt ratio on our hotel assets, so although this may take a while I have good faith that it will return, Venus says.(Terms)Copyright Dagens Narningslive AS and / or our suppliers. We would like you to share our cases using the link that leads directly to our pages. Copying all or part of the Content or any other use may only take place with written permission or as permitted by law. For additional terms Check it out here.
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