The company, which owns the Brisbane, Sydney and Gold Coast casinos, said the prevalence of the Omicron variant had impacted its revenue in December and January, but trading had improved since then.

The Star Sydney was closed from the start of the financial year until October, but recorded strong revenue growth when it re-opened. The Queensland casinos’ revenue was stable compared with the previous year when they were open and trading.

It expected earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation to be between $28 million to $30 million for the half year and a normalised net loss of between $73 million and $75 million.

The company, which is currently developing the Queens Wharf project in Brisbane’s CBD, said it had also identified an underpayment of wages and has started to repay those affected.

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“The underpayment has been identified through a six-year retrospective wage review of salaried team members underpinned by modern awards,” the company said.

“In some cases, team members were found to be not better off overall as the salary was not sufficient to compensate for their equivalent entitlements such as overtime and penalty rates.”

The $13 million bill would include back payments, interest and superannuation where applicable.

Managing director Matt Bekier said the company apologised to those impacted and it was committed to doing the right thing by acting transparently.

“Our priority is to address the issue and ensure that it does not happen again,” he said.