SATS released their 1Q FY2021 business updates on 24 August, which was for the period of 1 April 2020 to 30 June 2020. Headline numbers were a 55% fall in revenue to $209.4m, and a net loss of $43.7m. Aviation revenue decreased 72.9% to 110.6m while non aviation revenue rose by 73.3% to 96.9m.
Despite the challenging operating environment, I believe that the long term outlook for the aviation industry is still positive. In short, as the middle class gets wealthier, demand for air travel should increase as well. I believe that this is a long term secular trend that has only been temporarily disrupted by Covid. While Covid has probably resulted in many executives re-thinking the necessity for business travel, I believe that leisure travel would still recover strongly due to all the pent up demand. Even if business travel were to never recover to pre-Covid levels, I believe that growth in leisure travel would more than offset the fall in business travel. Furthermore, falling business travel volumes would hurt airlines more...