Shareholder queries airline’s profit

A SHAREHOLDER queried the profitability of the PNG Air in the first half of the year during its annual general meeting in Port Moresby yesterday.
Bob Bolling also queried the company’s proposed strategy to seek financing.
“There has been no specific statement that the company has been profitable for the first five months of this year,” he said.
“I think we should be told more specifically that point.
“Will you issue an interim report when you got the six months figures out?”
Chief executive officer Muralee Siva said the board was not obliged to report such information but required to give a six-month report to the Stock Exchange at which time the information would be available.
“As a board policy, we don’t issue forecasts,” Siva said.
Bolling further queried the results of the issuance of new stocks and the fact that the company was still highly in debt in relation to its share capital.
Bolling also question why PNG Air did not publish the load data of its operations.
Siva said in other countries, airlines published load information in the form of percentage of seats occupied, volume of cargo lifted and on-time performance.
Bolling said it would be good if the information was made available.
Chairman Murray Woo said such information should be kept “to our chest so that we don’t let our competitors know what is happening out there”.
The airline was originally established and started operations in 1987 as Milne Bay Air.
It operated as a charter company. In 2008 the airline was listed on the Port Moresby Stock Exchange and in November 2015, the airline rebranded as PNG Air.