Fraport Stock Up On Growth In FY24 Results, Positive EBITDA Outlook

(RTTNews) - Shares of Fraport AG were gaining around 2 percent in German trading after the airport operator reported Tuesday higher profit in its fiscal 2024 as revenues were benefited by increased traffic volumes and prices at Frankfurt Airport and across its international network of airports.

Looking ahead, for fiscal 2025, Fraport projects Group profit at previous year's level or slightly below, while EBITDA is expected to grow at moderate single-digit percentage. The company expects to see only moderate traffic growth in FRA this year due to the continued delays in delivery from aircraft manufacturers, which are particularly affecting its main customer, Lufthansa.

Fraport CEO Stefan Schulte said, "Despite headwinds, we've achieved a solid result. .. In addition to bottlenecks in the delivery of new aircraft, excessively high regulatory costs continue to be a major factor. If no political action is taken, costs imposed by regulators will further increase in 2025, with airlines facing an additional €1.2 billion burden. On the positive side, our international subsidiary airports largely presented a better performance, with many of them achieving dynamic growth rates."

For the 2025 fiscal year, Fraport expects Group result to reflect the non-recurrence of a one-off effect from 2024, when the sale of a minority stake in Pulkovo Airport contributed more than 40 million euros to the result. Passenger numbers in Frankfurt would reach up to 64 million.

By 2030, the company projects EBITDA to reach 2 billion euros, and Group-wide passenger numbers at fully consolidated sites to reach 187 million.

In Frankfurt, construction of Terminal 3 is continuing, with commissioning planned for after Easter 2026.

Further, the Supervisory Board and the Executive Board have again decided not to propose a dividend to the 2025 Annual General Meeting due to the continuing high level of Group debt. Instead, the company would allocate the profit earmarked for distribution to revenue reserves.

In fiscal 2024, Group result climbed 16.6 percent to 501.9 million euros from last year's 430.5 million euros. Basic earnings per share grew 14.6 percent to 4.88 euros from prior year's 4.26 euros.

EBITDA, a key earnings metric, grew 8.1 percent to 1.30 billion euros from 1.20 billion euros a year ago.

Revenue increased 10.7 percent to 4.43 billion euros from last year's 4 billion euros. Revenue adjusted for IFRIC 12 was 3.89 billion euros, up 11.7 percent from the previous year.

Despite challenges, the group-wide traffic growth was driven especially by developments at the locations in Lima, Greece, Antalya, and also Frankfurt Airport or FRA, the firm noted.

The Group-wide passenger numbers at fully consolidated sites rose by 2.9 percent year on year to 136.4 million.

Fraport welcomed around 61.6 million passengers at its FRA home-base airport in 2024, an increase of 3.7 percent compared to 2023. In Frankfurt, leisure traffic continued to dominate, while demand for business travel also continued to rise.

Cargo volumes in Frankfurt, comprising airfreight and airmail, rose 6.2 year-on-year in 2024 to around 2.1 million metric tons.

Across the Group, most of Fraport's subsidiary airports also experienced growth in 2024. Overall, passenger numbers at Fraport's Group airports outside Germany exceeded the levels seen in pre-pandemic 2019 by 1.3 percent.

In Germany, on the XETRA, Fraport shares were trading at 57.10 euros, up 1.7 percent.

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