Revenue growth from the duty free and travel retail stores of Mexican airport group ASUR (Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste) barely made it into double digits in the third quarter, a marked slowdown on the first half growth rate of +28.2%.

 

Q3 delivered a +10.6% rise in sales from DF&TR stores – a weak performance in relation to other commercial profit streams such as food and beverage (+14.0%) and advertising (+41.1%) – and a distinct downshift from the results in H1 when duty free sales were outperforming other segments.

 

Overall ASUR, which operates Cancún Airport and eight others in south east Mexico, saw its commercial revenues in Mexican pesetas increase by +16.0% year-on-year during Q3, to MXN327.1 million (US$25.1m) supported by a +10.2% increase in passenger traffic. That rise was driven by domestic passenger traffic (up +17.2%) while international passenger traffic rose by +3.5% chiefly at Cancún Airport.

 

NINE-MONTH RESULTS

The lacklustre third quarter store sales mean that ASUR’s nine-month DF&TR revenue growth has fallen back slightly to +23.0%, but it is still ahead of overall commercial revenue growth for the nine-month period of +21.4% year-over-year (see table below). Passenger growth in the period was +9.2% to 14.8 million of which Cancún had just over 11 million.

 

In addition, commercial revenues per passenger from direct operations for the nine months stayed the same as in the first six months at MXN16.9 largely due to the strong rise in Q3 advertising income. Total commercial revenues per passenger increased by +5.30% to MXN67.81 (see table below).

 

ASUR’s overall turnover rose by +18.0% to MXP3,783.5 million (US$289.8m) while EBITDA increased by +19.9% in the nine months to MXP2,260.3 million (US$173.2m).