GMR losses impacted by Delhi Airport Terminal 3; airport revenues grow

India's GMR Infrastructure Ltd stated its INR666.9 million (USD14.8 million) loss in the three months ended 30-Jun-2011 was caused by losses at Delhi Indira Gandhi International Airport and a higher tax payout (Dow Jones/CNBC TV18/The Hindu/Money Control/RTT News, 10-Aug-2011). The company posted a loss of INR1.92 billion (USD42.5 million) on its Delhi Airport operations. It also incurred a 38% year-on-year increase in interest costs and a 67% increase in depreciation on capitalisation costs for Terminal 3 at the airport. GMR expanded at the airport last year, with the construction of the country's largest international terminal, T3. Higher costs associated with the operation of the new terminal has impacted GMR, as it continues to negotiate with the airport regulator to be allowed to raise fees on various services for passengers and airlines. "Once new tariffs are in place, the airport division will become profitable," GMR airports division CFO Sidharth Kapur said. Meanwhile, GMR Infrastructure CFO A Subbarao noted that in addition to the depreciation and interest costs for Delhi, which "hurt our bottom line", losses were also experienced in Turky. He added that whether the company reports a profit in the 12 months ended Mar-2012 would depend on how much it can increase profits at Delhi Airport. On a revenue side, GRM Group Chairman G M Rao tated that "higher revenues were brought in primarily by the operations of Male International Airport (which was acquired by GMR in Nov-2010), higher traffic growth at the Turkey and Hyderabad airports, and several joint ventures of the Delhi airport". Looking forward, Mr Kapur forecast robust growth in traffic across all airports. "We expect FY2012 revenues to be around Rs 8000 crore [USD1.8 billion]" he added.

GMR Group: "The revenue growth of 51% is primarily because of a few reasons. One, the Male airport which has given about Rs 253 crore revenue for the quarter, which was not there in the previous quarter. Delhi Airport has contributed more than 41% revenue growth, Hyderabad Airport 34% revenue growth and Sabiha Turkey airport 29% revenue growth. So the general footfalls in all the airport assets have been pretty good. Consequentially, revenue has grown substantially in all the three airports. Therefore, the overall revenue growth in the airport segment is more than 100%...The major reason for the profitability is the Delhi Airport on account of depreciation and interest. The Turkey airport also has contributed about Rs 22-23 crore loss. This will take a few more quarters to turn positive. Also, post the sale of InterGen, we had some one time costs. We closed our international business headquarters post InterGen, so there are some closure costs. Also, there was a one time foreign exchange loss due to the repayment of the InterGen loans, which together account about Rs 24 crore. So these are broadly the major factors for the losses as well as for the revenue growth," G M Rao, Chairman. Source: CNBC TV18, 10-Aug-2011.

GMR Group: "As far as the airport sector is concerned, it has been a quarter of robust growth...Last year we have seen traffic growth of almost 22% in Delhi, 15% in Hyderabad, 27% in Sabiha and 14% in Male. Although Male did not contribute to the revenue and profitability in the last quarter of last year because airport was not with us at that point of time, the growth in traffic year-on-year was almost 14%. So all the airports have contributed significantly to growth in traffic and this has got translated into revenues as well as EBITDA growth, which are very visible for everybody to see. As far as Delhi is concerned, our losses have come down on a sequential basis against the last quarter because of cost reduction and also better management of our non-revenues. Everybody is concerned of when will this airport become profitable, but we have to realize two things in Delhi; one is that there has been a large infrastructure creation at Delhi. Almost Rs 13,000 crore of infrastructure has been created to build a world-class airport of international standards. This airport is running today and is a shining example of infrastructure development in the country," GMR airports division CFO Sidharth Kapur. Source: CNBC TV18, 10-Aug-2011.