Sheremetyevo Airport shareholders likely to sell 10% stake to foreign strategic investor in 2019 (translated)
26 DEC 2018
The private shareholders of the Sheremetyevo Airport will most likely sell a 10% stake in the airport to a foreign strategic investor in 2019, Russian news agency Prime reported.
Alexander Ponomarenko, Chairman of Sheremetyevo Board of Directors and co-owner, was quoted as saying that the private shareholders plan to sell a 10% stake in the Moscow airport next year to a strategic investor, most likely a foreign one.
Ponomarenko, quoted in both Prime and TASS news agencies, confirmed that the airport is in the final stage of signing an agreement with JPMorgan, to seek an investor for the sale of the 10% stake.
Ponomarenko noted that the value of the asset will depend on the growth trend of passenger traffic.
Sheremetyevo plans to increase the passenger traffic from 45m passengers in 2018 to 52m passengers in 2019, Prime further reported, citing Ponomarenko.
The Prime report said that a 66% stake in Sheremetyevo, Russia’s largest airport, belongs to Sheremetyevo Holding, which in turn is fully-owned by the Cypriot TPS Avia. In the latter, a 65.22% stake is owned by a trust of the Ponomarenko and Alexander Skorobogatko families, while 34.78% is owned by the businessman Arkady Rotenberg.
Russian federal agency Rosimushchestvo owns a 30.43% stake in Sheremetyevo, while minority stakes belong to national airline Aeroflotand VEB Capital.
On 25 December, Sheremetyevo CEO Mikhail Vasilenko and the Federal Air Transport Agency (Rosaviatsia) Head Alexander Neradko signed an agreement to transfer the entire airfield infrastructure to Sheremetyevo into a concession for 49 years, Russian daily Vedomosti reported today. The paper explained that currently, majority of Russian airports rent airfields from the government.
Sheremetyevo plans to invest RUB 61bn (USD 889.8m) in the airfield, the item reported quoting Ponomarenko's comments on the company plans.
The estimated value of Sheremetyevo was previously reported at RUB 150bn –RUB 170bn (USD 2.18bn-USD 2.47bn).