Yahoo Finance UPDATE 2-Overseas airports lift Fraport earnings above forecasts
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By Paolo Laudani and Mateusz Dobrzyniewski
May 14 (Reuters) - Germany's Fraport beat first-quarter earnings forecasts on Tuesday, with its international business offsetting the impact of strike disruptions at its Frankfurt Airport hub.
Fraport, which manages or operates 29 airports, including Delhi and New York, around the world said in a statement that strikes and weather-related cancellations had affected around 600,000 passengers in Frankfurt during the first quarter.
"Positive standouts were Antalya Airport on the Turkish Riviera, the 14 Greek airports, and Lima Airport in Peru," said Fraport as it also confirmed its full-year outlook.
A one-off compensation payment of 28 million euros in Greece for the negative effects of the coronavirus pandemic had underpinned Fraport's quarterly earnings, Deutsche Bank said.
Barclays analysts, meanwhile, said that Fraport's traffic data showed Greece and Lima were trading well, but Bulgaria and Brazil were struggling.
Fraport runs Brazil's Porto Alegre airport, where operations were suspended from May 3 due to flooding. The company said no details about the financial impact were available yet.
At Frankfurt Airport, Fraport said footfall had risen compared to the same period in 2023, with 12.5 million passengers passing through the hub serving Germany's financial capital, equivalent to around 85% of 2019 pre-pandemic levels.
Fraport said its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) rose to 212.6 million euros ($229 million), from 158.3 million a year earlier, which was above an average analyst estimate of 189 million euros, LSEG data shows.
The group's gearing, a leverage ratio of debt to equity, rose by around 5% in the quarter. Fraport says its debt is not rated by any credit rating agency. ($1 = 0.9274 euros) (Reporting by Paolo Laudani and Mateusz Dobrzyniewski in Gdansk; Editing by Alexander Smith)
