FRANKFURT (dpa-AFX) - The Frankfurt airport operator Fraport has made a surprisingly strong return to profit despite the strikes in the first quarter. The company announced in Frankfurt on Tuesday that a surplus of a good 16 million euros was attributable to shareholders in the typically weak travel period, following a loss of almost 22 million a year earlier. CEO Stefan Schulte believes that the Group is on track to achieve its targets for the year. However, the news was only briefly well received on the stock market.

The Fraport share gained around one and a half percent in value at times in the morning. By mid-morning, however, the share price had turned negative. At midday, the share was one of the losers in the MDax, the index of medium-sized stocks, with a discount of 0.4 percent. Since the turn of the year, the share price has fallen by around 13 percent.

In the first quarter, Fraport in Frankfurt had to contend with snow and ice as well as strikes by Lufthansa and employees at passenger checkpoints. Despite this, the number of passengers at Germany's largest aviation hub increased by more than a tenth to 12.5 million. Without strikes and winter weather, this would have been around 600,000 more, according to the Group.

Airlines also had to pay higher airport charges, and business at Fraport airports abroad continued to boom. At many airports, especially at vacation destinations such as Turkey and Greece, Fraport already has more passengers than before the coronavirus pandemic. At Frankfurt Airport, however, traffic in the first quarter was still 15 percent below the level of the pre-coronavirus year 2019.

Despite this, the Group increased its revenue in the first quarter of the year by around 16 percent to a good 890 million euros. Operating earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) even grew by more than a third to just under 213 million euros.

Fraport CEO Schulte sees this development as confirmation of his targets. He expects 61 to 65 million passengers in Frankfurt this year. The pre-crisis level of more than 70 million passengers is therefore still some way off. However, international business is all the stronger. This is another reason why operating earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) are expected to reach 1.26 to 1.36 billion euros across the Group this year.

Even without strikes and winter weather, April saw only a slight upturn in Frankfurt. According to a presentation on Tuesday, Fraport counted around 5.1 million passengers here after a good 4.8 million a year earlier. This is around 16 percent less than before the pandemic. In January, the shortfall compared to 2019 was only 13 percent - in December it was only 6 percent./stw/niw/stk