GERMANY. Fraport Group’s Retail & Real Estate division posted €419 million in nine-month revenues, a rise of +3% year-on-year. Within this, retail alone reached €144 million, marginally down on the same period last year.
Retail revenues per passenger hit €3.24, just below last year’s performance in the same period following a weak Q1 for retail. But this figure has improved since, with a positive effect from the new Terminal 3 at Frankfurt Airport, despite lower numbers of high-value customers.
In Q3, Retail & Real Estate revenues climbed by almost +4% year-on-year to €152 million. Retail alone rose slightly to €55 million with retail revenues per passenger marginally up to €3.08, driven by the Frankfurt T3 effect.
Addressing the impact of T3 in a presentation, Fraport noted that retail income per passenger in Q3 leapt +30% compared to performance at T2 (+40% in September), despite the impact of a -21% fall in Middle East traffic.
For the Fraport Group overall, revenue grew by +3.8% to €3,466 million in the nine months with EBITDA up +2% to €1,177.7 million. Net profit reached €314.5 million, down by -28.8%. The decline was attributed mainly to increased interest expenses, as well as higher depreciation and amortisation resulting from expansion projects in Lima and Frankfurt.
Fraport operations outside Germany made the largest contribution to growth, with their share of EBITDA increasing sharply, said the company.
In the first nine months, passenger numbers for the group exceeded pre-pandemic levels for the first time, driven by growth in Fraport’s international portfolio.
Passenger numbers at Fraport airports increased by +1.7% year-on-year to around 146 million overall. New records were set by the Greek airports (up +5.1% year-on-year) and Lima (+2.8%). Ljubljana posted +15.7 growth with airports in Brazil up +9.1 and Bulgaria +6.1%.
Passenger traffic in Frankfurt remained flat, declining by -0.2% year-on-year to 47.5 million.
Fraport CEO Dr. Stefan Schulte said: “The broad portfolio of the Fraport Group has proven its value. We’ve achieved a solid result at the group level, despite a difficult market environment due to the geopolitical situation in the Middle East and steep increases in jet fuel prices.
“Our international business has been a particular driver. Fraport’s Greek airports, which were already performing strongly, have improved even further. In addition, our airports in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and in Brazil have experienced strong growth and are now only slightly below pre-pandemic levels.
“By contrast, passenger numbers in Frankfurt have stagnated. Growth in Frankfurt continues to be restrained by excessively high regulatory costs and a reduction in flight offerings. In view of the strength of our international business outside Germany, we are maintaining our financial outlook for the full year.” ✈
