Renta 4 | April traffic data for Spanish airports has been published.
Although traffic levels are still below pre-pandemic levels, they are improving again significantly with respect to previous months, partly benefitting from the Easter holidays. The number of passengers reached 20,4 million in April, slightly higher than our forecasts and just 12% below 2019 levels. The number of domestic passengers registered was 5.7% below 2019, while the number of international travellers was 14.6% lower.
The number of flights also continues to improve, coming in at 2.9% below that recorded before the pandemic, with capacity down 4.2% vs levels registered in 2019.
Valuation:
Aena expects that traffic in the summer of 2022 will be very similar to that registered in 2019. This has led us to revise our estimates for the whole year to 15% below that of 2019 (vs -28%), while aware of the fact the DORA II scenario is established at 33% below.
We recall that our base scenario forecasts a recovery of pre-pandemic levels in 2024. Meanwhile Aena expects this to happen between 2025 and 2026. Given the excellent performance in traffic, we will see whether we bring forward the recovery to 2023 (our optimistic scenario in the July 2021 report which indicated a target price of 135,71 euros/ share). For the time being we reiterate our Underweight stance, Target Price 120,24 euros/share.
