Airport of Palermo, 44 million euro financing

A free loan agreement of 44 million euros was offered to Gesap, the airport management company of Palermo, from the pool of banks made up of Unicredit and Intesa Sanpaolo. The financial support will be provided for the interventions envisaged in the four-year plan of investments at Palermo Airport: extraordinary maintenance of the slopes, renovation and antisismic adaptation of the Terminal.
The whole operation turned out to be very complex. Following it at all stages, until the signing of the contract – reached within a few months – was the managing director of Gesap, Giuseppe Mistretta, in execution of the mandate received from the Board last February.
“The economic conditions underlying the contract – says Gesap – have been considerably improved compared to those in the” term sheet” proposed by the banks, which in an operation of this size have allowed to generate significant economies.”

Fabio Giambrone

The loan provides two lines of intervention: € 20 million will be used to carry out extraordinary maintenance work on the slopes, which will be carried out next October, without affecting the operations of the airport; € 24 million for the financing of the renovation work and antisismic adjustment of the terminal which will be carried out starting from 2018.
In the last meeting of shareholders, which was held last Friday, in addition to giving further approval to the mortgage agreement with the banks approved by the Board, the 2016 financial statements were approved, which for this year also the fourth consecutive , Closed with a positive profit of € 180,125 and a production value of € 60,845.311. The gross operating margin was 6.5 million euros.
“With the free way to finance and the budget in use for the fourth consecutive year,” said Fabio Giambrone, president of Gesap, the company centers on two important goals. A success that rewards the work done by this management, which has received and continues to receive the trust and the fundamental support of the Members. ”
The results achieved are attributable to the increase in traffic volumes, which raised the “core” revenues to 57.7 million euros and allowed to absorb more write-downs on loans compared to the previous year. Moreover, write-downs on technical fixed assets amounted to 950 thousand euros.
In particular, passenger traffic increased by 8.5% in 2016, the threshold of five million passengers was exceeded (5,309.000). The traffic results achieved were the highest in the last twelve years.
Gesap’s commercial policy has also allowed us to develop agreements for the development of new routes and to increase existing ones with Tuifly, Meridiana, British Airways, Air Malta and Swiss Air.
In addition to these, the new 2016 routes to Amsterdam, Brest, Crete, London Heatrow, Malta, Munich, Nice, Paris Beauvais, Berlin and Memmlingen are reported. This allowed us to record + 17% of national traffic against a country average of + 6.3%.
Also significant is the contribution of “non-aviation” revenues due to new car rental placements, refreshments and car parks that benefited from the revenue generated by the opening of the area for the long park, much appreciated by passengers.