Greece's Aegean Airlines profit drops, cuts dividend

Aegean reported a 53% drop in 2016 net profit Thursday, as a weak Q2 and higher value-added tax (VAT) outweighed a rise in sales beyond the E1b mark. Aegean Airlines said it made net earnings of E32.2m last year, down from 68.4m in 2015. Group sales grew 4% to E1.02b. The company, a member of the Star Alliance airline group, said passenger numbers grew 7% in 2016 to 12.5m, with its load factor - a measure of how full its planes are - improving by 0.6 percentage points to 77.4%. "A particularly weak second quarter and the increase of VAT tax by 11 (percentage) points had a negative impact on full-year results," CE Dimitris Gerogiannis said. "Adjustments to our network in the last quarter led to significantly higher load factors, especially on flights abroad, and the trend is continuing in early 2017," he said. Aegean, which flies a young fleet of 61 aircraft, mostly Airbus A320 jets, said its board would propose a dividend per share of 0.4 euros, down from 0.7 euros on 2015 results.<br/>