The desire to travel is back, and Germany’s largest airport in Frankfurt is also benefiting from this. In the summer, the operator Fraport earned more than ever. But there is still room for improvement in one key figure.
The return of the desire to travel gave Frankfurt airport operator Fraport the most lucrative quarter in its history this summer. The group counted as many passengers at its foreign airports as before the Corona crisis, but in Frankfurt the record level of 2019 was still a long way away.
Among the largest German airports, Frankfurt is still coming out of the crisis the fastest, said CEO Stefan Schulte. The manager did not raise the bar for 2023 when presenting the quarterly balance sheet on Tuesday, despite surprisingly good numbers. However, the news was received positively on the stock market.
The Fraport share rose by a good three percent to 51.18 euros in the morning, making it one of the strongest stocks in the MDax, the index of medium-sized stocks.
Exceeded own result
In the third quarter, Fraport increased its operating earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (Ebitda) by around 14 percent to 478 million euros compared to the previous year. The group not only performed better than analysts expected, but also exceeded its results from the summer of 2019 before the Corona crisis. Compared to the previous year, sales increased by a fifth to 1.2 billion euros. The bottom line is that shareholders received around 236 million euros, more than twice as much profit as the year before.
The record sales and profit levels are “very important in order to gradually reduce the new debt caused by corona,” said Fraport boss Schulte. At the end of September, Fraport was sitting on a mountain of net debt of 7.4 billion euros – over 3 billion more than before the pandemic at the end of 2019.
Passenger traffic in Frankfurt is also still a long way from the level seen before the pandemic: in the previous peak year of 2019, Fraport counted 70.6 million passengers at Germany’s largest airport. The board expects around 60 million passengers for 2023 – around 85 percent of the level from the record year 2019.
Delays and flight cancellations 2022
According to preliminary figures, the gap in October was still 12 percent – and in the first ten months a total of 17 percent. This was due not least to air traffic to and from China, which is only slowly recovering from the pandemic-related restrictions in the country.
In addition, Lufthansa and other airlines had planned their 2023 offering more cautiously after bitter experiences from the previous year. In 2022, staff shortages at airports and service providers led to immense delays and flight cancellations. Fraport boss Schulte now reported “significant progress” in the processes.
At the Fraport-managed participating airports abroad, the number of passengers actually reached the pre-Corona level again in the third quarter. The 14 regional airports in Greece and the airport in Antalya, Turkey, achieved new record values.
Source: Stern
