TUI Travel (LSE: TT.) confirms strong summer bookings.
TUI Travel (LSE: TT) advanced 8p, or 4%, to 238p during early London trade this morning after revealing it had enjoyed "strong trading for the Summer 2012 high season".
The travel company, which narrowly missed out on promotion to the FTSE 100 (UKX) this month, confirmed its forthcoming annual results would show "improved margins and load factors". Profits will be in line with City expectations, too.
Peter Long, TUI's chief executive, said today:
"We are very pleased with our Summer 2012 performance, with most of our programmes now almost fully sold. High demand in the peak Summer period, driven by our strategy of differentiated and exclusive product distributed online, has resulted in strong lates margins and load factors."
"We remain on track to meet our full year expectations, with strong underlying trading offset by the impact of re-translation of fourth quarter Eurozone earnings. Our continued outperformance in a challenging macroeconomic environment demonstrates our robust strategy is delivering clear results."
Looking ahead, TUI said Winter 2012/13 activity had been "encouraging". In particular, bookings in the UK and Germany were up 3% and 9% respectively on last year.
For Summer 2013, TUI stated UK bookings were up by 10% with average selling prices up by 3%.
Following today's statement, it seems TUI's shareholders might expect a further lift to the travel group's dividend. The first-half payout was lifted 3% back in May and the trailing 11.4p per share income currently supports a 4.8% yield.
Right now, TUI is just one of a number of shares that offer dividend incomes well ahead of what you can expect to receive from a standard savings account.
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> Maynard does not own any share mentioned in this article.
