Vietnam Travel and Marketing Transports JSC (Vietravel) have announced it would buy back a batch of bonds before maturity.

Accordingly, Vietravel will repurchase an entire lot of bonds, worth VND500 billion (US$21.1 million), issued on December 21 last year with a term of 24 months and a maturity date of December 21, 2023.

Of which, the interest rate applied for the first two 6-month periods is 8.2 per cent per year. The rates are calculated at 2.5 per cent plus the average interest rate of regular postpaid savings deposits in subsequent periods.

This means Vietravel pays the bond interest to bondholders a year before maturity, which is a positive signal that Vietravel has been able to balance cash flow to pay off debts ahead of time, thanks to the recovery of the Vietnamese tourism industry.

Previously, Vietravel was a travel agency that was heavily affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, at the end of last December, the company issued VND500 billion worth of bonds to supplement financial resources and prepare to restore the company's business activities.

After completing the bond repurchase of VND500 billion before maturity, Vietravel's loan decreases to 60 per cent compared to the financial statement data of the third quarter, which ended on September 30, and 63 per cent compared to the financial statement report on December 31, 2021.

According to the third quarter financial result, Vietravel's profit after tax was more than VND51 billion. In its consolidated report, the company's quarterly profit reached nearly VND7 billion.

The result is very positive, showing the recovery of the tourism and aviation industries, as the company posted a loss of VND108 billion in the first quarter and VND191 billion in the third quarter last year.

Vietravel's main business is tourism, showing that the results achieved in the third quarter are superior to the forecast. Revenue reached nearly VND1.5 trillion, 21 per cent higher than the set plan. The figure also increased by 25 per cent compared to the business results of the first six months of the year.

In the first nine months of 2022, Vietravel achieved revenue of VND2.7 trillion in the tourism business. Specifically, revenue from foreign tourism accounted for 50 per cent of the total revenue structure of the enterprise in September. The figure before COVID-19 (in 2019) was 66 per cent.

Vietravel said that tourism business activities have many positive changes. Customers now prioritise high-value tours, while tourists are also tending to book tours very early before departure day. — VNS