Fraport profit higher than expected – recovery continues
The Frankfurt airport operator Fraport increased its profit more than expected last year thanks to the recovery of air traffic from the Corona crisis. The operating result (Ebitda) rose by 36 percent over the previous year to 1.03 billion euros, as the company announced on Tuesday. The consolidated result increased even more strongly by 82 percent to almost 167 million euros. Fraport thus exceeded its own forecast and the estimate of the analysts surveyed by Refinitiv, who had expected a net profit of 100 million euros. Sales increased by almost half to 3.2 billion euros.
With almost 49 million passengers, the largest German airport had almost twice as many as in the previous year, but was still 30 percent behind 2019, the year before the outbreak of the corona pandemic. Some of the international airports in which Fraport has a stake recovered faster than the Frankfurt hub.
Fraport looks to the current year with confidence. “For the coming summer, we are expecting growth of more than 15 to around 25 percent in Frankfurt compared to the previous year,” explained Fraport CEO Stefan Schulte. The airport expects 57 to 63 million passengers for the year as a whole, which would be up to 90 percent of the pre-crisis level.
With the group result, Fraport wants to close the gap to the pre-crisis year 2019 as far as possible: The MDax group has set itself a range of 300 to 420 million euros. The operating profit should be between 1.04 and 1.2 billion euros.