Orient-Express Q1 loss widens to $4.3 mn

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Thursday , May 08, 2008 at 1237 hrs Orient-Express, owners of luxury hotels and trains across the world but lately more in news for speculations of Indian takeover attempts, has seen its losses widening by about one-sixth in the first quarter of 2008.

The company's net loss widened to 4.3 million dollars in the January-March quarter of 2008, from 3.7 million dollars in the same period in 2007.

Orient-Express Holdings, where Indian conglomerate Tatas are the second largest shareholder after promoters with a 10.5 per cent stake, sought to downplay the quarterly figures, saying Q1 is ‘traditionally a loss-making period’.

"Several of its European hotels are closed for most of the quarter and the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express and Royal Scotsman tourist trains and Afloat in France canal cruises do not operate for most of the quarter," said the company, which most recently hit the news columns for speculations about attracting takeover interest from another Indian firm DLF.

While officials at both OEH and DLF preferred to remain non-committal, reports about a possible bid from Indian realty giant propelled stocks of both the companies late April.

While announcing its Q1 scorecard, OEH said that its revenue rose to 119.9 million dollars, from 97.7 million dollars in 2007, and net loss from continuing operations shrinked to 2.4 million dollars, as against 2.5 million dollars in Q1-2007.

Still, OEH's shares fell by 2.6 per cent to 47.46 dollars on Wednesday. In Mumbai, shares of Indian Hotels fell by 1.6 per cent to Rs 116.15, while that of DLF dropped by 0.7 per cent to Rs 646.50 in afternoon trade at the BSE.