Topic: Last week, FWAG presented its winter flight plan, which shows an increase of destinations and frequencies compared to last winter and which serves a indicator of supply at Vienna Airport. In detail:
Vienna airport's most important carrier, Austrian Airlines (AUA; c. 50% market share), has left its number of destinations served unchanged at 86, however, has decided to increase the frequencies at important long-haul destinations such as Bangkok, New York, Maledives and Montreal.
The second largest airline at Vienna, low-cost carrier Ryanair (c. 21% market share), increases its fleet stationend at Vienna from 18 to 19, but also adds one more destination (now 56) served from Vienna. In addition, Ryanair also increases its frequency on more than 20 destinations.
In addition to increases in destinations and frequencies from existing airlines, SkyExpress (Greek Airline) will start to serve Vienna-Athens 4x a week, whereas AirArabia (UAE's largest low-cost carrier) has resumed the connection Vienna-Sharja (1h drive from Dubai) for 4x a week.
Overall, with more airlines, more destinations and an increase of frequencies, we expect a mid-single-digit increase in supply compared to the last winter period, which lasts from 29th October - 31st March.
We expect demand to follow as (1) Austrian real wages should rise 4.2% yoy this year (1.25% in FY'25e; Source: WIFO) and (2) the desire for leisure travel is resilient, visibile in a constant share of wallet. In fact, a recent study from Travel Data + Analytics shows a 21% yoy increase in German leisure travel sales for the upcoming winter season (based on Aug '24 booking data). While this cannot be directly extrapolated to Ausstria, we nevetheless regard this as a solid demand proxy.
One a sidenote, Ryanair's and Eurowing's recent decision to decrease capacities at German airports for summer '25 due to rising air ticket levies certainly appear alarming in general, but should not be extrapolated to Vienna airport, where both, the Lufthansa group as well as Ryanair, seem very happy with the airport operator, in our view, and where air ticket levies have not been increased since 2020.
In sum, we expect a mid-single-digit passenger growth (eNuW: 4.1% yoy) during the upcoming the winter season. Nevertheless, we also regard FWAG to be priced fairly and reiterate our HOLD recommendation with an unchanged PT of € 59.00, based on DCF.
ISIN: AT00000VIE62
