Hong Kong's Mass Transit Railway (MTR) operator said Thursday that the company saw a net loss of 334 million Hong Kong dollars (around 43.1 million U.S. dollars) for the first half of 2020 as the total ridership in Hong Kong dropped by around 38 percent year-on-year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

At an online press conference, MTR CEO Jacob Kam released the company's interim results of 2020, saying that the company's Hong Kong transport operations, station commercial businesses and property rental businesses had been affected to different extents in the first six months this year.

As for businesses in the Chinese mainland, Kam said MTR is expecting a gradual recovery of its business with the resumption of work and production there.

For international business, the MTR is working hard to minimize the financial and operations impacts to ensure sustainable operations, said Kam.

According to MTR's interim results, the company's revenues from recurrent businesses in the first half this year dropped by 23.6 percent year-on-year to 21.59 billion Hong Kong dollars (2.79 billion U.S. dollars).

The results also showed that MTR's recurrent business profit in the first half this year decreased by 83.8 percent to 433 million Hong Kong dollars (55.87 million U.S. dollars), property development profit for the period grew up 571 percent to 5.2 billion Hong Kong dollars (670.95 million U.S. dollars), while the revaluation loss on investment properties was around 5.96 billion Hong Kong dollars (770 million U.S. dollars), which led to a net loss of 43.1 million U.S. dollars.

The cross-border high-speed railway service started to be suspended from Jan 30 this year due to the epidemic, which has caused the total patronage for the high-speed railway down 89.4 percent year-on-year to around 1.1 million.

The MTR is expected to resume the high-speed railway service as soon as the COVID-19 outbreak is put under control in Hong Kong, Kam said.

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