Extraordinary general meeting at Athens airport: For a new loan of up to 320 million euros

By Fotis Fotinos

As everything shows, the Athens airport is moving forward in raising new funds. In the following days, an extraordinary general meeting of shareholders is scheduled, with the aim of refinancing the existing bond loans and obtaining an additional loan of up to 320 million euros.

According to financial analysts, the Athens airport, like Fraport Greece, is proceeding with the refinancing of its loans, but also with the conclusion of new ones, since the two years of the pandemic (2020-21), with the noticeable drop in turnover, caused a significant funding “gap”.

In fact, in the summer of 2021, a law was also passed in the Parliament for the financial support of Fraport Greece and the “El. Venizelos” airport, which provided measures of 177.9 million euros for Fraport Greece and up to 130 million euros for the airport of Athens (these measures mainly concerned the transfer of payments).

It is noted that, in the case of Athens airport, in 2019 the company that manages it paid 1.4 billion euros (including VAT) for the extension, by 20 years, of the existing concession contract.

Regarding the airport’s financial performance, in the “disastrous” 2020, the company’s operating income amounted to 186.2 million euros, down 63.25% (or by 320.5 million) compared to the previous financial year, leading to pre-tax losses of 54.2 million

Accordingly, regarding operational performance, Athens Airport handled 8.08 million passengers in 2020 (it was the worst year for the airport) and 12.35 million passengers in 2021.

Although it outperformed 2020 by 52.8%, in 2021 traffic remained down, compared to 2019, by 51.7%.

This year, the situation is different. At the 6-month level, the airport’s passenger traffic reached 9 million and remained reduced by 20.3% compared to 2019.

In June, passenger traffic stood at 2.43 million, down just 6.8% on June 2019 traffic.