Sani Şener, President & CEO, TAV Airports.

TAV Airports is to initiate a share buy-back process in order to contain the impact of market fluctuations amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

The company, which provides integrated services in all areas of airport operations, including duty free and food and beverage has a global footprint at 100 airports in 30 countries.

TAV served 8.5 million passengers in the first two months of the year, representing a 3% decrease compared to the same period last year. In the same period, total international traffic across TAV’s portfolio increased by 13%. Domestic traffic dropped 13%.

Sani Şener, President & CEO, TAV Airports said: “The coronavirus pandemic and related precautions resulted in a decrease in passenger traffic at the airports we operate around the world. Due to the fact we’re in the low season, the effect of this traffic decrease had limited effect on our financial performance to date.

“On the other hand, the pandemic has serious implications for the global tourism and aviation industry and this has reflected negatively in our share price. In order to confirm our confidence in our company, our board has decided to initiate a share buy-back up to TRY200m.

“We believe that the effects of the pandemic will be contained in coming weeks and the aviation industry will have a quick recovery, as we witnessed in prior incidents.”