Travel Department, the Dublin tour operator backed by private equity company MML Capital, doubled its pretax profits to €3 million last year as it bounced back from the pandemic, writes Brian Carey.
Turnover grew 48 per cent to €36 million, and the company paid a €2 million dividend to its shareholders, according to accounts filed in Companies Office.
“Departures from Ireland saw robust growth with customers heading back mostly to European destinations, in line with macro-market dynamics,” James Coughlan, its chief executive, said. There was a welcome return to growth in the firm’s European river cruise business and its long-haul packages.
MML took a majority stake in Travel Department in 2018, with founder Bob Haugh remaining a minority shareholder.
Coughlan said there was a bounceback in UK bookings this year, particularly from Northern Ireland.
Long-haul destinations Vietnam, China and India all featured in the company’s top ten sellers, Coughlan said.
He added that forward bookings for 2025 were “exceptionally strong”.
Bank levy hike ruled out to keep PTSB competitive
PTSB boss Eamonn Crowley
BRYAN MEADE FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES
The government bank levy, charged on the three Irish domestic banks, is set to stay at €200 million in the coming year to protect PTSB’s profitability, writes Jon Ihle.
Informed sources said the levy had hit a “virtual ceiling” because it represented such a large proportion of PTSB’s profits compared with rivals AIB and Bank of Ireland, and so could not be increased.
PTSB recognised a charge of €24 million for the bank levy in its first-half results, compared with €75 million in pre-tax profit. AIB, by contrast, paid €102 million but earned €1.1 billion in the first six months of the year.
The effective limit means that Jack Chambers, the finance minister, will be unable to draw more funding from banking to finance the cabinet wish list for the 2025 budget, despite the sector’s record profits.
The levy, which was introduced in 2014 to help finance economic recovery, was raised to €200 million by Michael McGrath, the former minister, last year in response to a public outcry over the banks’ windfall profits following successive ECB rate rises. The haul from the levy had fallen to €87 million after Ulster Bank and KBC pulled out of the market but McGrath more than doubled it following a review in a move that gave him more spending room.
The €200 million the government collects from the levy is not included in the base of revenue for spending purposes and represents a discretionary fund outside normal budget calculations.
Pearse Doherty, the Sinn Fein finance spokesman, has called for the levy to be doubled to €400 million.
Bank of Ireland and AIB have called for the levy to be extended to online competitors to more fairly distribute the burden but, as the levy is calculated on deposits, analysts said this would do little to offset the banks’ costs.
South African insurer gets its foot in door
OUTsurance Ireland’s chief executive Peter Broome
JUSTIN FARRELLY FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES
OUTsurance, the South African insurer which this year became the first fully licensed insurance provider to enter the Irish market in more than a decade, signed up 595 policies in six weeks of trading, writes Linda Daly.
The company launched here on May 13, offering car and home insurance. In its annual report, running to June 30, it said 595 in-force policies were in place in Ireland. The figure represents a tiny proportion of the 2.88 million policies OUTsurance has in its established markets in South Africa and Australia.
Marthinus Visser, group chief executive, told investors last week that OUTsurance was “very happy with the progress” of the Irish business and would grow it “fairly conservatively”.
“That is because when you have a brand-new start-up, you don’t have a lot of data to base your pricing models on. If you grow too aggressively you are at the risk of just amplifying pricing areas,” he said.
The company deployed €89.1 million to OUTsurance Ireland. It said it would start to fund the Irish business by €10 million each year for the next six years, starting this November. OUTsurance expects the Irish business to break even within five years. After that, it expects it will take two to three years to reach its target margin of 13 to 15 per cent.
The Irish entity recorded a €9.2 million loss in the year to the end of June, compared with a €2.9 million loss in the previous 12 months. It employs 76 staff in Ireland.
OUTsurance was set up in 1998 and is listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.
