Renova ready to sell minority stake in airport holding to foreign partners - paper
MOSCOW. March 28 (Interfax) - Viktor Vekselberg's Renova Group is prepared to sell a minority stake in its airports holding, Airports of Regions, to foreign partners, retaining control, Vekselberg told the Vedomosti newspaper in an interview.
"We're in talks with the RDIF [Russian Direct Investment Fund], they have foreign investors behind them," he said. The purpose of selling a stake is to raise more money for business development. "We have some big projects," Vekselberg said, giving the new Yuzhny airport in Rostov-on-Don as an example.
An RDIF representative told Vedomosti that the Fund was indeed looking for investors for Airports of Regions, but declined to make further comment.
The Airports of Regions holding owns and operates Kolstovo Airport in Yekaterinburg, Kurumoch Airport in Samara and airports in Rostov and Nizhny Novgorod. These airports handled 9.47 million passengers in 2015, down 8.7% from 2014. One member of the Airports of Regions group, Rostovaeroinvest, borrowed 15 billion rubles from Gazprombank last year to build a new airport just outside Rostov, the head of Airports of Regions, Yevgeny Chudnovsky, has said. The holding is building a new airport in Saratov.
At the same time, Renova is also in talks with VTB on the purchase of a controlling stake in LLC Northern Capital Gateway, which operates Pulkovo Airport in St. Petersburg, Vekselberg told Vedomosti. "This is an attractive project. It's a normal business situation - the seller wants to sell for more and we want to buy for less. If we reach a deal then fine, if not, then what's there to be done?" he said.
The Airports of Regions holding does not disclose consolidated financial results. The four airports between them had revenue of 9 billion rubles in 2014, operating profit of 2.9 billion rubles and net profit of 2.1 billion rubles to Russian Accounting Standards (RAS).
If these airports are compared with similar assets, the holding night be worth $1.5 billion-$2 billion, including debt, Raiffeisenbank analyst Konstantin Yuminov said. The four airports plus the holding's JSC Airports of Regions and LLC Airport Holding had accounts payable of around 20 billion rubles at the end of 2014, according to the SPARK Interfax database.
Oleg Deripaska's Basic Element found an investor for its Basel Aero holding, which operates the Krasnodar, Sochi, Anapa and Gelendzhik airports, back in 2012 when it sold a 30% stake to Changi Airport Group (Singapore Changi Airport) and 20% minus one share to Sberbank Capital, retaining 50% plus one share. "Changi's knowledge and expertise are very valuable, Vedomosti quoted Basel Aero chief Leonid Sergeyev as saying. "The new shareholder advises us on five areas: "Aviation commerce, helping, among other things, to bring Asian carriers to our airports; non-aviation commerce; quality of service; infrastructure planning, including the approval of master-plans for new terminals; and automation," he said.
Sergeyev said Airports of Regions might also bring in Changi as a co-investor - Asian investors are very active at present - or Germany's Fraport for partnership at Pulkovo.