Flight Centre and Computershare impress market with profit upgrades

Flight Centre chief Graham Turner and Computershare founder Chris Morris have seen their personal fortunes soar after their companies announced impressive profit upgrades.

Shares in Flight Centre have increased from $17.70 to $19.56 in the last two days after Turner announced a 33% upgrade to the company’s full year profit outlook.

Flight Centre is now expecting a profit of between $160 million and $180 million, up from its initial forecast of $125-135 million.

The new profit forecast would represent a 60-80% increase on last year’s profit of $99 million.

Turner said yesterday that the company is enjoying good results in the Australian market and improved sales volumes across most of its established markets, including Britain, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand.

The only drag on the company is its loss-making US venture, although stronger results are expected in the second half of the financial year coming into the US peak holiday season.

“Generally, our leisure and wholesale travel businesses have performed well and we have started to see some improvement in the global corporate travel sector,” Turner said in a statement.

“While clients are still down-trading, our continued success in winning new corporate travel accounts means we are well-placed to benefit when the market recovers.”

The value of Turner’s personal stake in Flight Centre has jumped $32 million in the last two days to just under $337 million.

Chris Morris has also enjoyed a good couple of days, with the value of his stake in share registry giant Computershare jumping by around $45 million to about $680 million.

Computershare is now forecasting a $US170 million profit in the six months to December 31, a 20% improvement on the $US145 million profit it posted in the previous corresponding period.

A number of big floats in Hong Kong and rights issues around the world have helped the global giant beat forecast.

And with more IPOs in the pipeline around the world, the outlook could improve even further for Computershare and Morris in the coming months.