Airport ber records billion dollar loss in corona year
The crisis year 2020 has ended for the operators of the capital city airport BER with a loss of billions of euros.
Because hardly anyone has flown for more than a year, the value of the airport buildings completed in october had to be adjusted downward by 767 million euros, said airport CEO engelbert lutke daldrup after a supervisory board meeting. He informed the committee that the company’s total loss last year was around 1.06 billion euros.
"That’s a very rough number," he said. "It is essentially characterized by the special depreciation, but also the normal business has naturally not had a positive result."The value adjustment of the new airport contributed three quarters to the negative result. In addition, there were regular write-offs of 141 million euros, according to lutke daldrup. In 2019, the bottom line loss was still 96 million euros.
It is well known that berlin airport is also in a bad economic situation due to the corona crisis. In 2019, almost 36 million people had still traveled through berlin airport, more than ever before. Last year, due to the pandemic, there were slightly more than 9 million. This led to revenue losses of around 239 million euros, said lutke daldrup.
According to the report, the losses are largely eating up the remaining equity capital. Lutke daldrup reiterated that a partial debt reduction of 1.2 billion euros is necessary.
Taxpayers have to step in, because the airport belongs to the federal government as well as to berlin and brandenburg. There, the parliaments must decide whether the required aid should be included in the budgets. However, there will be no changes to the long-term financing plans, emphasized lutke daldrup.
The owners had already stepped in this year and last year with loans and grants. They had also promised to cover the financing requirements for 2022. "The business plan envisages a figure in the triple-digit millions," said lutke daldrup.
Exact figures should be available in the fall. "We don’t know how soon the pandemic will really be fought to the point where we will travel again in rough dimension."The airport operators expect to be back to pre-crisis levels by 2025. Only then will the airport company be able to finance itself on the capital market again.
By then, the airport boss wants to be long retired. Lutke daldrup has already announced his departure for september of this year. The successor is not fixed yet.
"The succession solution for mr. Lutke daldrup will be decided when the discussion and the selection process have been completed," emphasized supervisory board chairman rainer bretschneider. He did not say when this would happen.
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