Shares in India’s Jet Airways plunged more than nine percent during trading on Wednesday after the company, part-owned by Gulf carrier Etihad, posted its biggest quarterly loss.
On the Bombay Stock Exchange shares in Jet, the country’s second-largest airline by market share, fell by as much as 9.38 percent to 243.00 rupees during trading. They retraced their losses slightly to end the day down 8.5 percent at 245.35 rupees.
The steep fall came after Jet reported that its net loss had jumped to 21.54 billion rupees ($366 million) for the fourth financial quarter ended March 31, from 4.96 billion rupees in the same period last year, as costs soar.
The publicly traded airline’s net loss for the year soared to 41.3 billion rupees from the 7.8 billion loss posted the previous year.
Jet chairman Naresh Goyal said the firm needed to take “stringent measures” to ensure success in the competitive industry.
“There can be no short-term solutions,” he said.
The company named its fourth chief executive since last June. It said aviation veteran, Cramer Ball, 46, a former chief executive of Air Seychelles, who has also worked in top positions at Etihad and Gulf Air, would be its new head.
Jet said it would reconfigure planes and write down overvalued assets as part of efforts to return to profitability.
All of India’s airlines have been reporting losses apart from market leader IndiGo, struck by high fuel prices and the country’s slowing economic growth.
The rivalry is set to intensify with two new airlines due to start operations in coming months — both Malaysia’s AirAsia and Singapore Airlines have set up joint ventures with India’s Tata group.
Etihad’s purchased a 24 percent stake in Jet in April 2013 after the government relaxed foreign ownership rules to allow overseas carriers to buy up to 49 percent of a local airline.