Hawke’s Bay Airport Limited Weathers Covid Turbulence, Future Looking Brighter

Today, Hawke’s Bay Airport Limited (HBAL) released its annual report for the financial year to June 2022, a year that Chair Wendie Harvey describes as one of ongoing recovery from the still lingering impacts of the global pandemic.

Ms Harvey says despite the year starting with signs of New Zealand beginning to reopen for business, the prolonged Auckland lockdown through September and October caused passenger numbers to reduce significantly and remain lower than usual until mid-April. The result was a disappointing trading performance.

“Like many businesses across the country, we continued to feel the pressures of Covid in the form of weaker operating cashflow, rising costs and passenger growth below expectations.” says Ms Harvey.

“Despite these challenges, by year-end, business had returned to month-on-month profitability and passenger numbers were on a trajectory toward pre-Covid levels. Overall, this is very encouraging, given the pressure the business was under,” says Ms Harvey.

FY2022 Financial Performance

Revenue for the year to 30 June 2022 rose slightly up from the prior financial year to $6.73m. However, costs such as insurance, electricity and rates all increased significantly. Management have worked hard to contain these pressures, but operating costs were still higher at $3.85m compared to $2.90m in the prior year.

For the 2022 financial year the airport has adopted a new approach to the valuation of its investment properties, align its reporting practices with industry peers. As a result of this change and the reclassification of a parcel of land in the Ahuriri Aero Park, the company has restated a number of line items in financial statements.

As a result of these changes and other balance sheet movements, reported shareholders equity has increased by $14.86m.

Looking ahead to 2023

Hawke’s Bay Airport Chief Executive Rob Stratford says 2023 is looking brighter and attention is now on diversifying the business and its revenue streams to provide greater resilience against future shocks to the aviation industry.

“This year we are firmly focused on making significant progress across a number of critical strategic projects including the business park development, our joint venture with Manawa Energy for the solar farm at the airport and growing air freight services.” he says.

“All three projects are aimed at developing airport infrastructure that serves the needs of the Hawke’s Bay region. The airport is a critical piece of infrastructure that acts as a gateway to Hawke’s Bay. These initiatives are all about helping enable regional prosperity.

We will also continue to work towards our goal of becoming New Zealand’s most sustainable airport. The partnership we formed with ASB in 2022 secures us a sustainability-linked loan of $23m allowing us to jump-shift our efforts toward carbon neutrality by 2030.”

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