Fraport Ag Frankfurt Akt

Warm welcome also from my side. All documents for this presentation were released this morning, 7 a.m. CST. Now it's time for the management presentation. Presentation will be held by Matthias Cichan, our CFO, and afterwards there's a Q&A session. We kindly ask you to limit your question to a maximum of three so that everyone will have the opportunity to raise some questions. As always, do take note of all the cautionary language at the disclaimer. And with that, I'd like to hand over to Matthias to start with the presentation, please.

Yeah, thank you very much. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, also from my side. Let me start my presentation today with a closer look at our traffic performance at the Frankfurt site in the first four months of fiscal year 2024. On slide number three, you see on the one side the reported passenger development, and on the other side, the underlying passenger development. As you know, we were meaningful impacted by strikes in the past quarter, which were carried out by Lufthansa unions and the Verdi Union for the passenger screening business in Germany. As a result, we lost about 500,000 passengers due to strikes and another 100,000 passengers because of a one-day closure for bad weather in January. Please note that The before mentioned numbers are just the direct impact without any passengers that we lost due to the uncertainty around the strike situation and didn't book their flights from or via Frankfurt. Correspondingly, we reported a recovery rate of just 84 to 85% for Frankfurt Airport in the first four months. Adjusted for the strike and weather related cancellations, the recovery rate would have been some three percentage points higher at 87 to 88%. As painful as the cancellations were, the good information is that most of the union disputes have been settled now and we can look forward to a more or less straightforward summer season. On a full year basis, we have meanwhile exceeded the previous year by some 1.4 million passengers. When considering that last year we ended about 59.4 million passengers, this means that we already achieved the lower end of our full year guidance without any further growth from here on, which is not our base assumption and also not realistic. Having said this, We are well on track to be at about the midpoint of our traffic guidance for this year. Moving on to my next slide, on number four, you see the development of our international portfolio. Fraport Greece and Fraport Antalya continued a positive trend in the first four months of the year. While the recovery rate in Greece exceeded Q1 2019 by 9%, also April showed a good momentum at 14%. Antalya Airport showed a passenger growth of 17% in Q1 and 12% in April, respectively. It is equally encouraging to see that Lima Airport is joining Antalya and Greece when it comes to the outperformance against 2019. At 104% in Q1 and 102% in April, Lima Airport is showing a very solid development year-to-date and is catching up on the lost performance due to the political unrest situation in the last year. At more than 100%, our TwinStar investment also looks strong in Q1, but is likely to come down over the summer season, as you can already see in the April figures. Here, the flights banned to Russia and the proximity to Ukraine continue to weigh on the traffic recovery. Brazil and Ljubljana are still below the 2019 level. While Ljubljana continues to miss a national flag carrier, Fraport Brazil suffers in Fortaleza from capacity reductions by Gol Airlines, which filed for Chapter 11 in the past quarter. At Porto Alegre Airport, You will have noticed that southern Brazil is currently experiencing the worst flooding the region has ever seen in its history. Many people have lost their lives. Our thoughts are therefore with the victims, their friends, and relatives. Porto Alegre Airport has also been affected. Due to the rising waters, the airport operations have currently been suspended. Please note that at this point of time, we cannot provide a precise guidance about the damages incurred or the economic impact of the airport's closure. It is however clear to us that the severe weather conditions will form a force majeure event under the concession contract and we have good coverage due to our insurance contract. We are currently assessing the situation with our colleagues in Brazil to see how we can provide support and restore operations as soon as possible. Moving on to our key financial highlights of the past quarter on slide number five. Ladies and gentlemen, the past quarter marked another turning point. It's the first time post-COVID that we recorded a positive group result in the starting quarter of a year. At 890 million euro, group revenues exceeded the previous year by 16% or 17% when adjusted for April 12th. Key drivers for the increase in revenues were the traffic recovery in Frankfurt and internationally, as well as higher airport charges. Positively impacted by a 28 million euro compensation for COVID-related effects at our Farport Greece investment. ABDA achieved an all-time high result in the first quarter of the year and exceeded 210 million euros. Due to higher DNA, EBIT on the other side was slightly short of the 2019 value by 3 million. Still, at 83 million, our Q1 EBIT almost doubled compared to the previous year value. Within our financial result, higher interest income compensated for the increase in interest expenses. Simultaneously, our Antalya investment recorded an improving result. Correspondingly, our group result turned positive again and reached €13 million in the past quarter. Turning the page to our cash flow and indebtedness situation on slide number six. Overall, the operating cash flow and capital expenditure developed in line with our expectations. Reflecting the positive traffic and financial result developments, The operating cash flow was clearly up compared to the previous year and also exceeded the value of Q1 2019. At €162 million, the operating cash flow would have also been sufficient to achieve a free cash flow breakeven without considering the expansion capex in Frankfurt and at Lima Airport a very strong result. including for the expansion capex, free cash flow was negative at minus 226 million. As a result, our group net debt increased to 8 billion euro at the end of the first quarter. Despite the higher net debt, our net debt to last 12 months EBITDA leverage ratio improved due to the operational result from 6.6 times to 6.4 times. Moving on to our repayment profile at the end of Q1, I am now on slide number 7. Despite the negative free cash flow, our liquidity position remained at the high level of more than €4 billion or €5 billion respectively, including for unused project finance and committed credit lines. Gross debt on the other side grew to slightly more than €12.1 billion. The increase in gross debt also reflects the project finance at Lima Airport, where we have meanwhile made use of close to €750 million. The unused project finance in Lima still amounts to more than €410 million. As a result of the continued refinance and Lima drawdowns, our average cost of debt increased slightly to 3.1% at the end of Q1. On the other side, our available funds also reflected an increased profitability. While we started last year with an average yield in Frankfurt of about 0.8%, we are now standing at an average yield of about 2.8%. Looking ahead, we expect the yield to steadily increase to about 3% by end of H1, which will help us to reduce our cost of carry. Coming to our development, starting as always with aviation on slide number eight. While we just handled 85% of our pre-COVID passenger number, the aviation charges exceeded the 2019 level by €20 million in the past quarter and reached €195 million. As a result, we dropped the 2019 comparison in our reporting, which also marks that we have left the pandemic behind. In addition to the traffic recovery, the increase in airport charges became visible, so plus 9.5% from January 1st onwards. Despite the absence of the positive one-off effect from the first-time ad equity accounting of our security business in the past year, EBITDA grew strongly by €16 million, mainly due to the higher airport charges. While DNA increased, segment EBIT remained clearly positive as well at 17 million euro. All in all, a very good start of our aviation segment in the first quarter of the year. Moving on to our retail and real estate segment on slide number nine. Revenues also in this segment exceeded the 2019 benchmark year. At €119 million, revenues were 10% higher compared to the previous year and 2% above the value of 2019. The revenue growth was mainly driven by the real estate division as well as by a continuous improvement in parking revenues per passenger. Regarding our retail activities, the picture remains mixed. While shopping and service revenues were higher than 2019 on a per passenger basis, advertising revenues continued to dilute the commercial revenues per passenger compared to 2019. We also show the relevant figures on slide number 10. Regarding advertisement, despite a negative performance compared to 2019, we are seeing an improving trend compared to the previous year. In absolute terms, advertising revenues grew by roughly 1 million euros compared to last year, or by 15%. With the increasing share of Far East passengers, but also the European Football Championship, we are confident to see further progress in advertisement over the course of the year. which will help us in our retail revenue per passenger key performance indicator. Regarding the segment EBITDA, we still recorded temporary headwinds from elevated costs from maintenance during the Q1 winter season. Despite the higher OPEX, EBITDA showed a good improvement compared to last year. At €83 million, EBITDA grew by close to 5%. Moving on to our ground handling segment on slide number 11. Despite increasing OPEX from a higher staff amount and collective labor agreement effects, ground handling showed a slight improvement in segment ABDA. At revenue of 160 million euro, the traffic volume, however, was still too low in the off-season quarter to cover the labor costs arising from permanent and temporary staff. Correspondingly, EBITDA remained negative at minus €20 million in Q1. Looking ahead, we expect better cost coverage from the increase in passenger numbers for the remainder of the year, as well as from the reduction of temporary staff from external contractors. Our final segment, International Activities and Services, is shown on slide number 12. The international segment continued its outperformance. Revenues, EBITDA, and EBIT stood well above the previous year and pre-crisis level. Regarding the EBITDA, you will have noticed that we recorded the 28 million COVID compensation at Fraport Greece entirely in Q1. Having said this, there is no further compensation effect in the upcoming quarters at Fraport Greece. Even when adjusting for the 28 million euro one-off item, the international segment stood above the previous year and pre-COVID levels. Key driver for the improvement in results was our Lima investment, which grew revenues by 12 million euro and EBITDA by 4 million euro. All in all, we are very satisfied with the performance of the segment at the beginning of the year. Coming to my last slide for today's presentation, our outlook, I am on slide 30. Following the development of the first three months, we left the guidance ranges unchanged. For Frankfurt Airport, the midpoint of the expectations remains at 63 million passengers, with a guidance range of 61 to 65 million passengers. Equally, on the level of ABDA here, the midpoint remains slightly above 1.3 billion, in the range from 1.26 billion to 1.36 billion euros. Consequently, the group net result range also remained unchanged between 435 million and 530 million euro, while the net debt to EBITDA expectation stays at about 6.4 times. Having said this, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to thank you for your attention, and we can now open the Q&A session.

Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. Participants are requested to use only handsets while asking a question. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. And the first question comes from Carlos Cabo Rossi Ortega from Kepler Schifrin. Please go ahead.