West Coach Station Q3 revenues up en route full recovery

By Tat Dat October 20, 2022 | 03:59 pm PT

Commuters ride a public bus in Ho Chi Minh City, March 2020. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran

The West Coach Station Company (WCS), a leading bus terminal operator, earned third quarter revenues 45 times higher year-on-year, but the number of passengers was three-quarters of the pre-Covid period.

The HCMC-based firm recorded revenues of more than VND27 billion ($1.1 million) and an after-tax profit of over VND11.8 billion. In the third quarter of last year, the pandemic’s peak in the city, it posted negative returns of VND7.3 billion.

Excluding the quarters hard hit by the pandemic (the second quarter of 2020; and from the second quarter of 2021 to the second quarter of 2022), the third quarter of this year saw the smallest revenue and profit earned by WCS since the second quarter of 2015.

In the 2016-2020 period, the company’s per quarter revenue and profits were in the VND30-35 billion and VND15-17 billion range, respectively.

WCS served over 1,000 coaches and over 24,300 passengers a day in the third quarter of this year, 78% and 70% of pre-Covid figures, respectively.

With business performance hit hard by the pandemic, WCS paid a dividend of just 20% in 2021, compared with 400% in 2018 and 516% in 2019.