SA biggest hotel operator Tsogo Sun Hotels is expecting a marked improvement in its headline losses for its 2022 year as it rebrands.
The company said in a trading statement on Friday it anticipated its headline loss per share to improve by 84.04%-86.8% to 9.6c-11.6c for its year end-March.
CEO Marcel von Aulock told the Sunday Times in April said that while the hotel sector was “not back to normal ... we are in a better space”.
When Covid-19 hit, Tsogo closed many of its hotels — except those offering rooms for people in quarantine — operating a skeleton staff and deferring salary increases and bonuses, but it now sees revenue improving 21.24%-44.45% to R1.41bn-R1.68bn.
Tsogo Sun, which also runs more than 100 hotels across Africa and the Middle East, is the biggest in SA’s leisure sector. Offerings range from hotels catering to the hoi polloi to the upper end, including the Mount Grace Hotel & Spa in Magaliesberg and 54 on Bath in Rosebank, Johannesburg.
The company also announced that shareholders would vote on changing the company name from Tsogo Sun Hotels Limited to Southern Sun Limited while retaining its share code on the JSE.
Tsogo Sun unbundled its hotel business in 2019, with Tsogo Sun Gaming and Tsogo Hotels being listed separately on the JSE, but said on Friday the gaming and hotel groups operate in different markets and that the “joint use of the Tsogo Sun brand is not optimal”.
It is a return to its roots after SA Breweries and hotel magnate Sol Kerzner created Southern Sun Hotels in 1969.
The share price was up 1.52% on Friday afternoon R3.35, but down 5.17% since the start of 2022.
The company will release its annual results on Thursday.
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