TURKEY. TAV Airports today reported nine-month results, with revenue of €356 million up by +56% year-on-year. Q3 revenue of €199.8 million reached 82% of 2019 levels. This, said the company, was due to the “relative normalisation of international traffic” and the addition of Almaty Airport to the portfolio.
TAV Airports served 37.2 million travellers in the first nine months, up by +77% year-on-year. Although this was 52% of 2019 levels, the Q3 figure for international traffic was 64% of that recorded in the same period in 2019.
Nine-month EBITDA of €117 million was a surge of almost +600% on Q3 2020, but more significantly, the Q3 figure of €93 million was 79% of Q3 2019 levels. Net profit for the nine months reached €88.1 million, down by €203 million on a year earlier but this was due to an extraordinary one-off gain in Tunisia last year, said the group. In Q3, profits reached €64.8 million, or 73% of Q3 2019 figures.
Duty free revenue for TAV Airports (ATÜ Duty Free is a joint venture with Unifree Duty Free/Gebr Heinemann) reached €20.1 million in the nine months, up by +74% year-on-year.
With the assumption of effective vaccination in 2021, noted TAV, Eurocontrol expects air traffic in Turkey to recover to 62% of 2019 levels in 2021 and 85% in 2022.
TAV Airports Holding Executive Board Member & CEO Sani Sener said: “With relative normalisation of international travel where COVID-19 vaccine documentation has become mostly sufficient for cross-border mobility, we had significant increases in our international passenger traffic in the third quarter of 2021. Although there are still many exceptions to this rule, I believe the exceptions will tend to decrease as well over time.
“Since international traffic is the most profitable part of our business, this relative normalisation was key to revenue recovery. Including revenue contribution of Almaty, which we acquired in May 2021, we recovered 82% of revenue compared to the third quarter of 2019. On a like for like basis without Almaty, we recovered 66% of revenue, which is in line with the recovery in international traffic.”
He added: “With good passenger recovery, strict opex control and contribution of Almaty, we managed to recover 79% of EBITDA that we had recorded in the third quarter of 2019 and generated significant amount of operational cash. With healthy cash generation, our net debt decreased -6% in the third quarter versus the second quarter. Therefore, I can say that we had an excellent third quarter of 2021.
“With gains from Tunisia debt restructuring, significant EBITDA generation, improvement in the performance of our joint ventures and favourable impact of exchange rates, we ended the first nine months of 2021 with net profit of €88 million.
“During the third quarter, we signed credit documents with IFC and EBRD and are now expecting to start to use the cash in the fourth quarter of 2021 on the construction of the new international terminal in Almaty. Almaty has been performing really well with delivery of €12.5 million EBITDA in five months. Seasonality is very low in Almaty so the first and fourth quarters should be relatively comparable to second and third quarters in financial performance, unlike the rest of our portfolio, which is mainly geared to the third and second quarters. In this regard, Almaty will also be instrumental in decreasing overall consolidated EBITDA seasonality.”
