Auckland International Airport will sell its quarter-stake in the Cairns and Mackay airports in North Queensland to its fellow investors for A$370 million (NZ$403 million), almost three times what it paid eight years ago.
The Auckland Airport operator this month said it was considering sell the holding and today said it will offer its 25 percent stake in North Queensland Airports to the Australian transport hub's existing investors. All NQA investors are entitled to maintain their current holdings and Perron Investments and The Infrastructure Fund have already agreed to accept the entire offer.
"We are very pleased to have reached a position that will result in a sale of our entire interest and that two existing and experienced infrastructure investors have agreed to support NQA in the next stage of its development," chief executive Adrian Littlewood said in a statement. "The sale will enable Auckland Airport to focus attention on growing its New Zealand travel, trade and tourism businesses and to recycle the proceeds into supporting the significant step up in aeronautical investment at Auckland Airport over the five years that we recently announced."
The Kiwi company bought the stake in Australian airports in 2010 for A$132.8 million in an effort to expand outside its core Auckland business to develop connections with Cairns and build routes into Asia.
North Queensland Airports reported a net profit of A$46.8 million on revenue of A$142.7 million in the June 2017 financial year, turning around a loss of A$54.8 million on revenue of $134.6 million in 2016. Mackay airport's domestic passenger numbers shrank 8.4 percent to about 775,000 in 2017, while Cairns' domestic traffic rose 3.5 percent to 4.4 million and international traffic excluding transits was up 7.4 percent to 668,000.