TIDMTCG
RNS Number : 6655K
Thomas Cook Group PLC
17 December 2018
17 December 2018
Thomas Cook Group plc
(the "Company")
Annual Report & Accounts 2018 and Annual General Meeting
2019
The Company's Annual Report & Accounts for the year ended 30
September 2018 ("2018 Annual Report"), Notice of Annual General
Meeting 2019 and Proxy Form have been posted or otherwise made
available to shareholders today.
In accordance with LR 9.6.1, these documents have been submitted
to the National Storage Mechanism and will be available for
inspection shortly at www.morningstar.co.uk/uk/nsm.
The 2018 Annual Report and the Notice of Annual General Meeting
2019 can also be viewed on the Company's corporate website at
www.thomascookgroup.com.
The Annual General Meeting 2019 is scheduled to be held at
10.30am on 7 February 2019 at Upper Ground Floor, North Building,
200 Aldersgate, London, EC1A 4HD.
The information contained in the Appendix below, which is
extracted from the 2018 Annual Report, is included solely for the
purposes of complying with DTR 6.3.5R. The information should be
read in conjunction with the Company's Full Year results
announcement made on 29 November 2018. This announcement and the
Full Year results announcement together constitute the material
required by DTR 6.3.5R to be communicated to the media in unedited
full text. This material is not a substitute for reading the full
2018 Annual Report.
Enquiries:
Alice Marsden Matthew Magee
Group General Counsel and Company Head of Corporate Communications
Secretary 020 7294 7059
020 7557 6400
Appendix
Statement of Directors' responsibilities in respect of the
Annual Report, the Directors' remuneration report and the financial
statements
The Directors are responsible for preparing the Annual Report,
the Directors' Remuneration Report and the financial statements in
accordance with applicable law and regulations. Company law
requires the Directors to prepare financial statements for each
financial year. Under that law, the Directors have prepared the
Group and the Company financial statements in accordance with
International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRSs) as adopted by
the European Union. The financial statements are required by law to
give a true and fair view of the state of affairs of the Company
and the Group and of the profit or loss of the Group for that
period.
In preparing those financial statements, the Directors are
required to:
-- select suitable accounting policies and then apply them
consistently;
-- make judgements and accounting estimates that are reasonable
and prudent; and
-- confirm that the financial statements comply with IFRSs as
adopted by the European Union.
The Directors confirm that they have complied with the above
requirements in preparing the financial statements.
The Directors are responsible for keeping adequate accounting
records that are sufficient to show and explain the Company's
transactions and disclose with reasonable accuracy at any time the
financial position of the Company and the Group, and enable them to
ensure that the financial statements and the Directors'
Remuneration Report comply with the Companies Act 2006 and, with
regards to the Group financial statements, Article 4 of the IAS
Regulation. The Directors are also responsible for safeguarding the
assets of the Company and the Group and for taking reasonable steps
for the prevention and detection of fraud and other
irregularities.
The Directors are responsible for the maintenance and integrity
of the Company's website. Legislation in the United Kingdom
governing the preparation and dissemination of financial statements
may differ from legislation in other jurisdictions.
Principal risks and uncertainties
The table below lists the principal risks and uncertainties as
determined by the Board that may affect the Group and highlights
the mitigating actions that are being taken. The content of the
table, however, is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all the
risks and uncertainties that may arise.
Principal risks Mitigation
Strategic initiatives
-----------------------------------------------------------
Fully implementing
our strategy for * Supported by the creation of a new hotel platform, we
profitable growth continue to expand our own brand hotel offering, to
remains our focus, streamline our core product portfolio and to
however, there is implement the operational change to fully benefit
a risk that we cannot from our strategic partnership with Expedia
fully achieve the
change required
due to scale of * We continue to develop our TC Money business,
change to our business ancillary offering, service levels and our digital
and operations and channels to ensure we meet the demands of our
the complexity of customers
our underlying processes
and systems.*
* We have embedded a standalone project management
office, reporting to the Executive Committee, to
oversee a significant efficiency programme, which
forms the operational efficiency objective that
underpins our strategy. The programme involves
simplifying processes and systems, which support our
margin improvement initiatives
* Bi weekly Executive Committee meetings attended by
senior management during which progress and issues
are discussed and addressed
* Operational initiatives are linked to financial
benefits and KPIs incorporated in our business plan.
Delivery of operational change and the benefits
achieved are tracked as part of the business review
process
-----------------------------------------------------------
Customer satisfaction
-----------------------------------------------------------
Providing a great
customer experience * Senior management continue to focus on ways to
remains at the heart improve the experience that our customers have with
of our strategy us, to encourage our people to focus on customer
and we believe that excellence and to develop products that will attract
this is one of the and retain customers
key factors that
differentiates us
from our competitors * We proactively monitor our Net Promoter Score (NPS),
in increasingly both at a hotel and airline level, to identify and
competitive markets. address areas for improvement at each stage of the
There is a risk customer journey (factors affecting Airline NPS are
that we are unable further discussed on page 60)
to meet the expectations
of our customers
and thus attract * We have implemented our InMoment tool, which provides
new or retain existing all our people with customer feedback at the
customers, which individual hotel level. Feedback is incorporated into
may have an adverse action plans to promote positive behaviours and to
impact on our market investigate areas of customer concern
share and profitability.*
* Our organisational values are aligned with our
Customer Promises of Quality, Service, and
Reliability and all employees are required to include
customer related objectives in their annual
objectives
* The 24-Hour Hotel Satisfaction Promise has been
extended to all of our differentiated properties and
has been re-launched on our websites to highlight
this key value add to our customers
* In FY19, we plan to launch 'Express Check In' to our
range of innovative holiday features. In FY18, we
launched 'Choose Your Room', 'Choose Your Favourite
Sunbed' and 'Late Check-Out' in selected properties;
all of which were well received by our customers
* Our CRM tool, CView was launched in FY18. This tool
allows us to better understand our customers. We will
use this information to enhance the experience our
customers have with us
-----------------------------------------------------------
Quality of our products
and services
-----------------------------------------------------------
We strive to offer
a choice of quality * We have allocated significant extra resources to our
products and services own-brand hotel portfolio and have recruited
that appeal to customers. additional highly experienced people in order to grow
There is a risk the business
that our products
and services do
not meet the expectations * We have launched a new hotel brand, 'Cook's Club',
or demands of new aimed at younger discerning travellers, to sit
or existing customers.* alongside our premium Casa Cook brand. We use
customer insight and analysis of future trends as the
basis for the design of our own brand hotels and to
shape the customer experience
* We continue to work closely with our strategic
partner, LMEY Investments, to source and develop high
quality hotels through our new hotel platform
* We continue to refine the hotels within our
differentiated portfolio. This allows us to focus our
resources on quality hotels that will deliver a
better experience for our customers
* We now provide our customers with a choice of over
150,000 hotels in global city and European domestic
locations as well as sun and beach locations not in
our core portfolio. This has been achieved by
implementing the operational changes under our
strategic partnerships with Expedia and Webjet
* We continue to provide innovative ways for customers
to personalise their experiences
* We will drive growth and uptake of our financial
services products in digital and offline. These
products provide our customers with lower fees on
foreign currency transactions and greater benefits
-----------------------------------------------------------
Digital strategy
-----------------------------------------------------------
We aim to make our
expanded product * We continue to invest in our websites and in
offering and services technology to allow us to service customers
available and easily seamlessly across all channels. Through 2018, we have
accessible to our experienced stronger growth in web bookings across
customers in their our major markets
preferred digital
channels. There
is a risk that our * We regularly undertake customer research to better
market share, profitability understand what our customers want and how they
and future growth interact with our digital channels. The results of
will be adversely our research are incorporated into our development
affected by the roadmap
inability to develop
our digital channels
fast enough to meet * Our web platforms in the UK, Northern Europe, Belgium
changes in consumer and The Netherlands continues to deliver strong
behaviour.* bookings growth and with the continuous development
of 'MyAccount' customers have access to a far greater
range of products and services to personalise their
holidays
* We will invest further in our mobile channels to
enhance search functionality and to become more
'digital in destination'. Our Companion App enables
our customers to personalise their experience with us
* We have implemented a central content hub that will
distribute hotel images and content to all our
markets at a consistent standard and at a more
efficient cost base. We will invest further in this
in the coming year
-----------------------------------------------------------
Talent
-----------------------------------------------------------
We are reliant on
being able to attract * We have strengthened our Executive Committee in the
the right talent past year with the appointment of an experienced
in order to deliver Chief Hotels Officer
our transformation
agenda. There is
a risk that the * Our Group Leadership Development programme for direct
inability to attract reports to Senior Leaders commenced in 2017,
and retain talent targeting those identified as having potential for
at all levels of senior leadership roles
the organisation
will lead to a lack
of capability or * We identify high potential talent using a matrix of
capacity to enable performance and potential. Those identified have
us to the deliver targeted development plans based on their career
the change required aspiration
by our business
strategy.
* We use our annual engagement survey to assess
employee commitment and to identify actions to retain
talent and develop our customer focused culture
* Our Graduate programmes continue to attract a high
volume of applications since their introduction in
the UK and Group Airline businesses in 2016
* We have invested in our in house Learning and
Development resources in order to give our people
greater access to learning opportunities
* We have a pay for performance culture that is
designed to drive performance and provide meaningful
reward for delivery of our objectives
-----------------------------------------------------------
Technology
-----------------------------------------------------------
We are increasingly
dependent on technology * We have a robust process in place to assess proposed
to reduce costs development projects and to prioritise resources to
and to enhance customer projects that will both support our strategic agenda
service through and provide high return on investment
development of new
functionality and
applications. There * We have strengthened our oversight of development
is a risk that operations projects through the roll out of dedicated project
would be adversely management software
affected if our
IT infrastructure
is unable to support * We continue to enhance our IT operations and service
the needs of the delivery processes to ensure that we can support new
business. technology required by the business
* We have begun the implementation of a programme to
consolidate our technology estate and simplify
processes within our tour operator business, which
will lead to a reduction in operational expenditure
and facilitate more focused capital expenditure
* We have developed IT programs that address the
functional aspects of technology required to support
and enhance our customer service and an
infrastructure program that addresses our network,
data centre and end user compute capabilities that
underpin this functionality
-----------------------------------------------------------
Cyber security
-----------------------------------------------------------
There is high level
of awareness across * We continue to build upon on our robust Cyber
industries of the Security Strategy based on five objectives: Protect,
threat posed by Detect, Deter, Respond, and Recover
cyber criminals
and of the reputational
damage caused by * We have successfully implemented a range of people,
the loss of personal process and technical controls in line with our Cyber
data. Due to the Security Strategy
nature of its business,
Thomas Cook necessarily
processes a high * All employees are required to complete annual
volume of personal training in data protection in order to raise
data and there is awareness of good cyber security practice
a risk of significant
brand and reputation
damage and financial * Our Cyber Security Steering Group continues to meet
loss should information monthly to monitor the progress of the Cyber Security
security be compromised. Strategy implementation and to make recommendations
for any additional mitigations to the Executive
Committee. The Audit Committee also receives regular
updates regarding progress on cyber risk mitigation
* We have implemented the changes required by the
General Data Protection Regulation. This included a
project to identify and map all the personal data
processing systems used across the group and to
create a central record of our data processing
activities. We have also implemented a remediation
programme to improve controls in our highest risk
systems and to educate our people on the importance
of data protection
-----------------------------------------------------------
Disruption to airline
operations
-----------------------------------------------------------
The success of our
Group Airline business * Mitigations were implemented in FY18 to respond to
depends on our ability disruption related to our increased flight capacity
to effectively manage and increased pressure on our operational resilience:
our fleet by ensuring establishment of dedicated response teams, closer
we maintain the collaboration with key suppliers, proactive use of
right number and sub-charters and more efficient use of aircraft
types of aircrafts reserves
and by operating
those aircrafts
to deliver a high-quality, * We will implement additional mitigations in FY19 to
on-time and cost-efficient further improve our operations, customer experience
service for our and NPS: more proactive and earlier planning,
customers. increase aircraft reserve capacity, long-term
maintenance planning, interface optimization between
Inability to operate the individual airlines and the maintenance function,
the required number less reliance on third party sub-charters
and types of aircraft
in our fleet may
lead to missed revenue * We are continuing the implementation of a programme
or reduced margins. aimed at achieving efficiencies in the maintenance,
Inability to operate flight operations, ground operations, operation
the fleet effectively control and flight dispatch departments through the
may lead to customer adoption of a more streamlined organisational
dissatisfaction, structure, which will have a positive effect on our
cost increases and ability to prevent operational disruptions and to
reduced profitability. allocate resources more effectively and efficiently
* The fleet Management Team continuously assesses the
status of our fleet; forecasting potential needs and
managing dismissal and intake of aircraft. Our fleet
strategy also involves the structuring of our lease
plans over a long period of time. This approach
allows us to refinance the lease/purchase of aircraft
on a staggered schedule
* The Long Haul fleet renewal campaign is to be
launched in FY19. The acquisition of new aircraft is
subject to a number of qualitative criteria that
guarantee consistency with our product offering
-----------------------------------------------------------
Cash and working
capital
-----------------------------------------------------------
Cash generation
from trading activities * Cash flow forecasting is performed centrally and we
is essential if proactively monitor our short, medium and long-term
we are to invest cash requirements and liquidity headroom
in the business
in order to deliver
value over the long * During FY18, we refinanced our GBP400million bond at
term and to meet lower cost while extending the debt maturity profile
scheduled payments
under the terms
of our debt facilities * The issuance of a new bank facility in FY18 for the
as they fall due. Group Airlines has increased headroom
There is a risk
of a decrease in
operational performance * We have implemented a robust efficiency programme in
caused by a range order to achieve operational savings from
of factors (including consolidating technology systems and harmonising
economic, financial, processes
regulatory and market
factors), of which
many are outside * We continue to monitor all opportunities to manage
our control.* liquidity requirements and maintain an adequate level
of contingency as well as seeking to lower the
average cost of debt over the medium term
-----------------------------------------------------------
Health and safety
-----------------------------------------------------------
Due to the nature
of our business * We monitor developments in health and safety
and industry, the regulations in all the markets in which we operate
Group will always and incorporate changes into our common Group
be exposed to the policies, standards and procedures. The policies
risk of a health address all major risk areas including accommodation,
and safety incident swimming pools, balconies, transport, excursions,
en route to a destination, fire and hygiene
in the accommodation
or during an excursion.
There is a risk * We operate an annual Health and Safety Audit
that an incident Programme for all our differentiated properties. The
that results in programme is delivered by reputable external
the injury or death specialists (SGS and Cristal), verifies compliance
of a customer would with Federation of Tour Operators and industry
have a direct negative standards and includes a robust follow-up process. We
impact on our reputation have enhanced our audit programme for FY19 to
and indirect impact incorporate additional hygiene assessments in
on our future financial properties which experience higher than average or
performance. increased levels of reported illness
* The Group Health, Safety, and Security Team regularly
reviews and updates its safety and security training
programmes to ensure they continue to reflect best
practice
* We have a group wide Customer Protection Policy to
ensure that customers are not put at risk in hotels
that have undergone construction works or
refurbishment
* We actively monitor health and safety incidents
reported to us to ensure that we address the causes.
We have seen a marked reduction in illness claims
after we put in place prevention and detection
measures in an effort to address this issue that was
specific to the UK market
-----------------------------------------------------------
Geopolitical uncertainties
-----------------------------------------------------------
In recent years
numerous countries * We have a proven ability to shift committed capacity
that rely on tourism to alternative destinations in the event of
as a vital export fluctuating demand in a given destination
have experienced
geopolitical disruption
through political * We continue to rebalance our destination mix and add
instability or terrorist new destinations to our portfolio, thereby mitigating
activity. There the impact of geopolitical events
is a risk of a significant
decline in customer
demand should there * We have developed a Hotel Security Framework, which
be an incident or defines a set of minimum security standards that
increased threat should be operational in our hotels. Implementation
of a terrorist attack of the Framework will follow a risk-based approach
in any of our key
tourist destinations.*
* We proactively monitor the geopolitical landscape by
partnering with the Risk Advisory Group, a leading
independent global risk management consultancy that
provides intelligence, investigations and security
services
* We continue to follow the guidance of the appropriate
state departments relevant to our source markets
* We have a robust crisis management framework which we
can activate in the event of an incident. Crisis
management test exercises are conducted on a regular
basis
-----------------------------------------------------------
Brexit
-----------------------------------------------------------
A disorderly exit
from the EU by the * Our Public Affairs teams has proactively met with
UK would result Government officials from both the UK and the EU to
in significant disruption ensure our concerns are appropriately understood
to many businesses.
A disorderly exit
could present the * A Brexit Working Group, which included
following risks representatives from Finance, Tax, HR, Communications
to Thomas Cook: ,
* Loss of access to the European Single Aviation Market Legal, Risk, the Group Airline and the Tour Operating
would have a significant impact on the ability of our Segments, was convened to consider and assess the
UK Airline to operate in the EU and the US. impact of all risks related to the UK's upcoming exit
from the EU
* Loss of access to EU employment markets, including
the ability for businesses to place temporary workers * We are putting in place contingency plans, with a
in EU Member States without additional barriers may particular focus on ensuring that our customers'
cause a skill shortage in the UK and in destination.* holiday experience is not impacted
* We are in advanced discussions with local aviation
regulators in Germany, Spain and Denmark as well as
the European Commission and we are confident that our
contingency plans will enable our Group Airlines to
continue to access EU airspace in the event of a
disorderly Brexit
-----------------------------------------------------------
Compliance with
regulatory and legislative
requirements
-----------------------------------------------------------
There is a risk
that we do not comply * We have a dedicated legal team, which works to ensure
with regulatory, that we comply fully with regulatory requirements and
legislative and which monitors all current and emerging regulatory
corporate social developments in our source markets. The team receives
responsibility requirements regular training to provide awareness of critical
in the legal jurisdictions changes in relevant legislation or case law
where Thomas Cook
operates.
* A cross functional project team was set up to
implement the change required by the General Data
Protection Regulation. The team included
representatives from the Legal, Risk, Human Resources
,
IT, Cyber and Customer Experience departments
* We continue to engage with the European Union
Competition Commission in their investigation into
the travel industry regarding hotel accommodation
agreements
* Our Code of Conduct is backed by a comprehensive
training programme to ensure that it is fully
embedded across the Group
* Our Legal Risk Database enables communication and
timely analysis of all risks related to regulatory,
legislative and corporate social responsibility
requirements
* In regards to the EU Competition Commission
investigation, Thomas Cook is committed to fair and
open competition and will cooperate fully with the
Commission through the process
-----------------------------------------------------------
* Principal risk with a direct link to the viability
statement.
This information is provided by RNS, the news service of the
London Stock Exchange. RNS is approved by the Financial Conduct
Authority to act as a Primary Information Provider in the United
Kingdom. Terms and conditions relating to the use and distribution
of this information may apply. For further information, please
contact rns@lseg.com or visit www.rns.com.
END
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