Four Seasons Revenue Jumps

The Canadian hotel group is the last of the industry majors to report quarterly earnings.

Author:: Ross Snel
Publish date:: Nov 4, 2004 9:50 AM EST

Four Seasons Hotels

swung to a loss in the latest quarter as it redeemed option notes and suffered currency exchange losses.

The company reported a third-quarter net loss of C$11.1 million, or 31 Canadian cents a share, vs. net income of C$4.4 million, or 12 Canadian cents, a year earlier. The third-quarter net loss was US$9.2 million, or 26 cents a share. (Since the company did not provide exchange rates in its earnings release, all of the currency conversions are based on the current rate of C$1.21 to the U.S. dollar.)

The results included a pre-tax loss of C$14.6 million, or 41 Canadian cents a share, on the redemption of Liquid Yield Option Notes due 2029; a pre-tax foreign-exchange loss of C$4.5 million, or 13 Canadian cents a share; and a pre-tax non-cash loss of C$4.6 million, or 13 Canadian cents a share, related to property transactions.

Excluding those items, Four Seasons earned 30 U.S. cents a share, just above the 29 cent-a-share analyst consensus, according to Thomson Financial.

Revenue came in at C$82.7 million, or US$68.3 million, topping the US$56.9 million expected by Wall Street and up 14% year over year.

Revenue per available room, a key industry metric also known as revpar, increased 14.6% year over year on a U.S. dollar basis at the company's worldwide core hotels.