Australia's Ardent Leisure Group, the owner of a theme park where four people were killed on a water ride this week, said the company will speak to the victims' families on Thursday as it defended its safety practices amid intense criticism.



At its annual general meeting, company officials said they would offer financial assistance to affected families but rejected media reports that park staff closed the ride hours before the accident due to safety concerns, only to be pressured into reopening it.



"It's just a devastating tragedy and it's still having a lot of problems for all of us to deal with it, to be honest," Chairman Neil Balnaves told the meeting in Sydney.



"We will do everything to support the families. It's a time for grieving and that includes every single one of us."



Two days before the scheduled meeting, two men and two women were killed when they were trapped under an upturned raft on the Thunder River Rapids Ride at Dreamworld, near the tourist-magnet Gold Coast district in Queensland state.



Instead of providing a short update on its U.S. expansion aims, as planned, the meeting showed a company still in the early stages of managing the aftermath of Australia's deadliest theme park accident in four decades.



Balnaves, who previously said he would retire after the annual general meeting, said he would help the company with three inquiries into the accident: by the state workplace safety authority, the coroner and the company itself.



Earlier, Ardent said in a statement the ride completed an annual safety inspection less than a month ago.



The company also faces a blow to earnings as a result of the accident, Balnaves told the meeting, noting that it expected earnings to be affected for the remainder of fiscal 2017 and into the following financial year before recovering.



Theme parks generate a quarter of Ardent's earnings, according to its 2016 annual report. In August, the company said theme park earnings rose 8.5 percent as a spike in Chinese visitors pushed admission numbers up 13 percent.



The incident also put Ardent under pressure to defend its executive pay arrangements since an item of business at the meeting was a share incentive plan of new Chief Executive Officer Deborah Thomas.



"Four people have died, people are shattered, this is not something people deal with very easily, right now I do not want to discuss transactions," Thomas told reporters after the meeting when asked if she would decline the shares.



"I'm a mother, I have a family, I take my family to Dreamworld, I am sympathetic."



After holding a memorial ceremony on Friday, the park is due to open "as normal" on Saturday.



Thomas said the company decided to reopen four days after the accident because psychologists believed it would help staff recover.



Ardent shares fell 22 percent in the two days after the accident, but recovered 7 percent on Thursday.