The financial results of the Polish Airports State Enterprise (PPL), the operator of several Polish airports, including the Warsaw Chopin Airport, considerably improved in 2021, the second year of the pandemic, against 2020, the company reported.
Although PPL recorded a loss of about PLN 185 million (EUR 40 million) in 2021, the result was better by about PLN 236 million (EUR 51.3 million) compared to 2020, PPL said in the report.
“The key measure of the company’s profitability, the EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation), for the previous year is positive and amounts to PLN 167 million (EUR 36 million), which is almost twice as much as in 2020, when it was around PLN 87 million (18.9 million),” PPL added.
The company noted that 2021 was the second consecutive crisis year for the aviation industry.
“In 2020, due to the coronavirus pandemic, there was a complete collapse of the air transport market. In 2021, the market was slowly recovering, but the results of H1 were still quite weak due to the spring wave of Covid-19,” the report read.
“A significant recovery was noticed only in H2 2021, and tourist traffic was a significant part of the observed growth,” it added.
The 2021 results “show radical increases and improvement of the financial situation compared to 2020”, PPL said.
The company added that, this year, after the two years of crisis, it expected a positive result on core operations which, according to the financial plan, would amount to PLN 54 million (EUR 11.8 million).
According to PPL, in 2021, Chopin Airport, Poland’s largest airport, serviced 7.5 million passengers, as forecast, up by 36.3% YoY.
“For 2022, we planned to check in over 10 million passengers at the Warsaw airport, but our current results indicate the possibility of a significant excess of this plan,” PPL Vice President Stefan Swiatkowski said.
“In May, we recorded the level of over 40,000 people serviced in one day,” he added.
Apart from Warsaw Chopin Airport, PPL also manages several regional ports, including those in Krakow, Rzeszow, Modlin and Poznan. (The First News/Business World Magazine)