Dufry moves to cope with 90% drop in sales

摘要

DUFRY last week joined the travel-dependent companies to tap the market over liquidity concerns in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, raising just over SFr500m (US$513m) from a combination of short-dated convertible bonds and a capital increase just shy of 10% of existing capital. Dufry neatly illustrates the coronavirus experience of many global companies in the first quarter. It was "characterised by completely different developments in each of the three months", the company said in a trading update. Performance was slightly positive in January, hurt by a slowdown in Asia in February, and then calamitous in March when year-on-year sales fell 55.9%. April sales so far are just 10% of last year's numbers.