The continuing spread of coronavirus will have a significant impact on Wollongong's adventure tourism and skydiving company, Experience Co for the rest of this year.
In a half yearly presentation to shareholders, the publicly-listed company (previously known as Skydive the Beach) said it was already suffering from a drop in tandem skydiving numbers due to this summer's bushfires, and flagged COVID-19 as a "significant" external factor.
CEO John O'Sullivan - who formerly headed up Tourism Australia - said he had never seen anything like the recent run of disastrous events.
"The tourism industry has not faced as big consecutive external events, ever," he said.
"We've had once in a generation fires, and we've now got the issue of a pandemic. It's been a very testing time."
In the report, Mr O'Sullivan said the number of international visitors from China and other countries was "impacted across all sectors", and noted the effects of the coronavirus would continue until at least June.
"We don't believe its impact will cycle out until the end of this financial year, not just because of the virus but also the various government responses to dealing with or containing the virus," he said.
The company may consider "mothballing" unprofitable experiences in the short term due to the virus.
"We'll also be really working our sales channels, focusing on the Chinese community already in Australia who we know like to jump with us," Mr O'Sullivan said.
"And we'll be focusing on the local market, particularly the student market - we've had a lot of increased activity around O-Weeks at universities this week. We're doing everything we can from a revenue and costs basis."
Skydiving numbers were already down by 9.3 per cent to December, the company said, due to weather, bushfires and smoke haze.
"This has continued into the peak December and January trading months," the report said.
Drop zones from Byron Bay to the Great Ocean Road were affected, with tandem jump numbers and forward bookings down, the report said.
However, the company still had "record days" skydiving at its largest drop zones, Wollongong and New Zealand.
The company also reported that it had made about $3 million worth of cost savings so far this year.
After posting a $48 million loss in 2018/19, the company has sold off two of its "non-core" business: Cairns Canyoning and Great Barrier Reef Helicopters.
Other "asset realisations" and the "disposal" of five other adventure businesses were listed as being in-progress.
"Despite the challenges, we have a very healthy balance sheet with the changes we've made in the first half of this year, and also, with the skydive model, it's a variable cost base," Mr O'Sullivan said.
This, he said, meant costs only kicked in when skydiving drop zones were operating, as they mainly use contracted staff.
Like many companies on the Australian share market this week, EXP has been trading low at around 20c per share on Wednesday.
This is only slightly up from it's lowest share price in August 2019, during an inquest into the deaths of three people during a skydiving accident at the company's drop zone in Mission Beach.
In late 2017 the share price reached a high of 85c per share.
Kate McIlwain
For more than a decade, I've helped the Illawarra Mercury set the news agenda across the region. Currently I'm the paper's health reporter - covering the stories of Illawarra workers and residents in the wake of a global pandemic and at a time where our health systems are stretched to the limit.
For more than a decade, I've helped the Illawarra Mercury set the news agenda across the region. Currently I'm the paper's health reporter - covering the stories of Illawarra workers and residents in the wake of a global pandemic and at a time where our health systems are stretched to the limit.
