(Bloomberg) -- Turkey's biggest airport operator will take a minority stake in the country's Antalya hub, buying out the local partner of a franchise jointly run with Germany's Fraport AG.
TAV Havalimanlari Holding AS, majority owned by Aeroports de Paris, is paying privately held IC Ictas Insaat AS 360 million euros ($440 million) in cash for its 49 percent holding in the concession to run Antalya, the company said on Tuesday, confirming an earlier report about the plan by Bloomberg News. The transaction is financed by debt and expected to close in the first half of 2018, it said. The concession runs through 2024, and Fraport will continue to own the other 51 percent.
Shares of TAV rose 4.2 percent in Istanbul on Tuesday, closing at the highest level in almost 2 1/2 years.
TAV operates more than a dozen airports across Turkey, including Istanbul Ataturk, the country's largest. The company is planning to add more domestic and international airports to its portfolio as the concession for Ataturk -- its biggest revenue earner -- ends in 2020. Controlling four out of five airports along the Turkish riviera will give it more marketing power, the company said, adding that it expects the Antalya deal to help earnings as soon as this year.
The news may act as “a slightly positive catalyst” for the stock, Melis Pocar, an analyst at Istanbul-based Oyak Securities, said in an emailed note.
Antalya airport, the country's third-busiest, served about 26 million travelers in 2017 and generated nine-month earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of 187.8 million euros on revenue of 215.7 million euros, TAV said in an emailed presentation.
To contact the reporters on this story: Asli Kandemir in Istanbul at akandemir@bloomberg.net, Ercan Ersoy in Istanbul at eersoy@bloomberg.net, Richard Weiss in Frankfurt at rweiss5@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Stefania Bianchi at sbianchi10@bloomberg.net, Paul Armstrong, Tom Lavell
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