TAV Airports excited about a potentially ‘robust’ third quarter

TAV Airports handled 13.1 million passengers and generated €156 million in revenue across its global airport network during the first half of 2021.

The passenger total amounted to 8 million domestic and 5.1 million international passengers at its airports, which include gateways in Turkey, Tunisia, Croatia, North Macedonia and Saudi Arabia.

“We had a very productive first quarter of 2021, during which we received two-year time extensions and rent deferrals for our Turkish airports from DHMI and we booked a one-off gain of €109.0 million as a result of Tunisia debt restructuring,” notes TAV Airports’ executive board member and CEO, Sani Sener.

“With the highest quarterly EBITDA since 2019, the second quarter of 2021 became operationally our best since. As the third quarter is seasonally the strongest in our business, we are looking forward to a solid next quarter with the continuation of quarantine-free travel availability using our airports.”

Sener reveals that the first half of July was significantly above June in terms of recovery levels, in-line with the company’s expectations, with preliminary data for the first 20 days of the month showing that Antalya served 59% of international passengers compared to the same period in July of 2019.

He says: “We have always told our investors that recovery in our airports would be very quick once restrictions were lifted, which is what we are witnessing at the moment. According to Eurocontrol numbers, among all European countries, Turkey has recovered the fastest compared to July 2019 in terms of daily flights.

“With these favourable tailwinds behind our operations, we had revenue of €95m in the second quarter of 2021 which was the highest quarterly revenue since the start of the pandemic. Two months of Almaty operations, which we started consolidating in May 2021 contributed €19.5 to our consolidated revenue.

“With strict cost control and the support of Turkish government we managed to keep costs 41% below pre-pandemic levels, even after the addition of Almaty. Without Almaty, costs would be 47% below pre-pandemic levels.

“Almaty contributed €5.5m to our consolidated EBITDA in two months thereby generating 23% of our consolidated EBITDA for the first half of 2021.  Among all our international airports, Almaty showed the strongest recovery so far with international passengers already at 44% of and domestic passengers 50% above 2019 level.”

Sener notes that the vaccination programme has picked-up speed in Turkey, and by the end of June around 50% of population had received at least one jab.

“With the continuation of these favourable developments, we are very excited about looking forward to a robust third quarter,” he concludes.