Normalised operating result increases, but from a new depreciation policy
In 3Q2014, the Lufthansa Group increased its net income by 25% to EUR561 million. Revenues grew by 1.9% year on year to EUR8,458 million. The operating result, which more closely reflects the underlying performance of the group, also grew by 25% and reached EUR735 million.
In order to adjust for a high volume of restructuring costs and project costs, largely in connection with the group's SCORE programme, Lufthansa also presents a 'normalised' operating result. Due to a lesser amount of these one-off costs in 3Q2014 versus 3Q2013, the normalised operating result increased at the slower rate of 10%, to EUR785 million.
To complicate matters further, Lufthansa changed its depreciation policy this year so that it now depreciates its aircraft over 20 years to a residual value of 5%, compared with its previous policy of 12 years to 15%. This leads to lower annual depreciation charges and brings Lufthansa more in line with other European airlines. The group's 3Q2014 depreciation cost was EUR70 million lower than a year earlier, just exceeding the EUR68 million improvement in the normalised operating result.
In other words, the normalised 3Q operating result would not have been higher than last year if the depreciation policy had remained the same.
For 9M2014, revenues were down slightly (-0.6%), the operating result was up 28% to EUR849 million and the normalised operating result grew by 17% to EUR1,004 million. The EUR143 million improvement in the 9M normalised operating result fell short of the EUR79 million reduction in the 9M depreciation charge, so the like for like result actually deteriorated.