Accor beats performance expectations

AccorHotels, Europe’s largest hotelier, said restructuring efforts and robust demand in most markets except France and Brazil helped it beat expectations with a 3.5 percent rise in like-for-like operating profit last year.
AccorHotels, undergoing a reorganisation begun by Chief Executive Sebastien Bazin in 2013, said it aimed to continue to significantly improve its operational and financial performance this year despite a volatile global economy, Reuters reported.
AccorHotels was cautious on France, its largest market, which makes up 30 percent of group revenue and where operating profit fell 10 percent last year due to cancellations after Islamist attacks in Paris killed 130 people in November.
Visibility on French bookings remained low in the first quarter, Bazin told a conference call.
In Brazil, where Accor is the biggest hotel operator with 220 hotels, the company also braced for a lengthy economic slowdown though Bazin said operating profit, which fell 50 percent last year, was unlikely to further decline this year.
Brazil is the group’s fourth-largest market after France, Germany, and Britain, making seven percent of group sales.
AccorHotels, whose 14 hotel brands range from budget Ibis to luxury Sofitel, said earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) reached 665 million euros in 2015.
This compared with company guidance of between 655 million to 675 million euros. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S had expected 659 million euros.
Bazin, a private equity specialist who took over in August 2013, has split Accor into two divisions, HotelServices and HotelInvest, to separate its hotel services business from its property activities in a move to boost profitability.
AccorHotels has also been beefing up its food and drinks offering and its digital business to fight the rising challenge of companies such as Airbnb and online travel agents Expedia and Booking.com.
On Thursday it announced the acquisition of a 30 percent stake in Oasis Collections, an American marketplace for private rentals, and of a 49 percent stake in Squarebreak, a French start-up offering high-end rentals in France.