Copenhagen Airports pretax profit up 42.7%

Print Article E-Mail Article

Passenger growth at Copenhagen and Newcastle airports and an increased investment in ASUR has strengthened the group's full year prospects

Copenhagen Airports has reported a pretax consolidated profit of DKK355.8m ($59.6m) for the six months to 30 June 2004, a rise of 42.7% from the same period last year.

The group said it benefited from passenger growth at Copenhagen and Newcastle airports as well as an increase in mid-April of its investment in Mexican airports operator ASUR from 6.3% to 8%.

Copenhagen airport showed an increase in passenger traffic in the first half of 2004 of 8.7% compared to the same period last year, resulting in a DKK137.67m ($23.1m) increase in turnover. Traffic continued to show year on year growth in July with a 9.5% increase to reach 1.88m passengers.

The group said Newcastle International had shown "considerable" growth relative to 2003 because of rising passenger numbers, although it gave no figures for its contribution. The airport expects annual traffic to exceed 5m for the first time by the end of 2004 and to reach 10m by 2016.

Copenhagen Airports reiterated that it expects pretax profit for 2004 to be around 20% higher than in 2003.