Airports ‘take off’ on the Mexican Stock Exchange at the beginning of 2023

The three airport groups listed on the Mexican Stock Exchange (BMV) have earned almost 40,000 million pesos in capitalization during the first days of 2023, driven by solid results in their passenger traffic.

Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacífico (GAP), which operates the Guadalajara terminal, is the one that advances the most in the new year, with a rebound in its shares of 14.67% to 320.09 pesos per share.

For its part, Grupo Aeroportuario del Centro Norte (OMA), which manages the Monterrey terminal, rebounds 10.74%, at 166.19 pesos each paper.

Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste (Asur), which manages the Cancun airport, advances 9.41% to 497.44 pesos.

Alain Jaimes, an analyst at Signum Research, said that the behavior of the airports in the first days of the year “has been quite remarkable.”

“It could be responding to the favorable dynamics in passenger traffic, which has pleasantly surprised on the rise,” he explained.

A few days ago, the airports announced that during 2022 they recovered and even exceeded the traffic they had before the pandemic

Asur received 66.3 million passengers in the 12 months of last year, an increase of 19.19% compared to 2019.

GAP had a traffic of 32.4 million passengers last year, which represents a growth of 16.25% compared to three years ago.

OMA had a traffic of 23.2 million passengers, slightly higher than it had in 2019 (23.17 million).

In total, last year’s traffic from the three groups represents a record figure, according to a report by Monex Casa de Bolsa.

“It should be remembered that when the pandemic was just beginning, the expectations that various analysts had were that this recovery would take place until the first half of 2023,” said Brian Rodríguez, an analyst for the industrial sector at Monex Casa de Bolsa.

Monex highlighted in its report that the growth in passenger traffic occurred mainly in complexes related to tourism, such as the Cancun and Tijuana airports (from GAP).

The Cancun airport had 30.3 million passengers in 2022, an increase of 19.1% compared to 2019, while the Tijuana airport transported 8.1 million people, an increase of 35.5% compared to three years ago.

“OMA presents a lower growth because although the complexes related to tourism were the best, business trips (on which OMA depends the most) are still lagging behind,” said Rodríguez.

2023 won’t be so good

Alain Jaimes mentioned that by 2023 the shares of the groups will continue to grow, although at a more moderate pace than last year. In 2022 they were one of the most winning.

Brian Rodríguez said that this year the growth in the level of passenger traffic will not be as high as in 2022. He estimates a single-digit growth, in a range between 8-12%, “this without considering an economic recession” . The specialist highlighted the airport groups as attractive this year, due to the performance of the tourist complexes and Nearshoring.

termometro.economico@eleconomista.mx