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MTR officials said the improvement in business was mainly due to a rebound in local passenger numbers, while the profit from property developments jumped almost 70 percent.
The company carried 1.6 billion passengers across its domestic rail and bus networks in 2021, a 23 percent increase on the previous year.
But Jacob Kam, the company’s CEO, said fare revenues from passenger services were still at around 60 percent of pre-pandemic levels, as cross-boundary services remained suspended.
“As we headed into 2022, the community started facing a drastic resurgence of Covid-19 cases in Hong Kong, leaving all businesses badly battered. Given the current situation, our businesses will need more time to return to normal,” he said.
Kam said the company has taken a number of measures to maintain services as far as possible after some staff came down with Covid, although some have already recovered and returned to work.
“We have deployed all the available resources that we have, including asking some of the retired staff to come back to help. But as you can imagine, there is a limit on how much we could do. But so far, we have been able to keep the impact to a controllable state,” he said.
The MTR chief also said they are closely monitoring whether the current outbreak will have any impact on the opening of the final section of the Shatin-Central Link, which will see the East Rail Line extended from Hung Hom to Admiralty.
“The new wave of Covid-19 has impacted on all of our activities, including some of the project activities. So far our target remains to open the new section in June or July this year. And of course we will have to monitor the effect of the new wave of pandemic closely to make sure that we can continue to achieve our progress milestone.”
The MTR proposed a dividend of HK$1.02 per share.
It closed at HK$40.45 on Thursday – 1.13 percent higher than the day before.