DFS Group’s sales at San Francisco International Airport grew by +17% in the fiscal year to 30 June, generating US$92.1 million.

 

The result was better than the performance of overall concession sales at the US west coast gateway, which grew by +14.4% to US$783.4 million (see table below). However, DFS’s sales growth has declined compared to the exceptional +30.7% seen in the previous 2011 fiscal year when they reached US$78.8 million.

 

Among the other three categories that make up concessions: retail, food and beverage, and rental cars, the growth rates in fiscal 2012 were +13.1%, +16.0% and +13.5% respectively.

 

 

Rents from the duty free sales paid to SFO in fiscal 2011 and 2010 stayed the same in both years at US$26.4 million due to a minimum annual guarantee.

 

The strong relative performance of duty free sales has been partly helped by improving traffic; in the year to June, total passenger numbers reached 43.06 million, up +7.7%, but international numbers only crept up by +3.0% to 9.27 million.

 

SFO offers non-stop links to more than 31 international destinations on 28 international carriers. Based on weekly seat capacity the strongest five international routes at SFO are: Tokyo (Narita and Haneda combined), London Heathrow, Hong Kong, Seoul and Frankfurt.

 

The US$383 million revamp of terminal two, originally constructed in 1954, will have helped push up the retail component of concession sales. The 59,460sq m (640,000sq ft) T2 is home to American Airlines and Virgin America and was finished in April last year.