2023-06-30 04:00:00
Áreas straightens the course and considers the consequences of the pandemic to have been overcome. After having cut its losses by 70% in the last year, to just 30 million, the company has been awarded contracts worth more than 2,000 million euros in just six months.
Particularly noteworthy is the concession for the operation of restaurant establishments for eight years, obtained at Madrid’s Barajas airport for an amount of one billion; the award of 450 million for ten years in Houston (Texas, USA) or the service areas in West Virginia, also in the United States, for 248 million euros over 15 years.
The company is confident in the good prospects for this summer to thus exceed the 1,900 million euros in revenue that it registered in 2019, before the arrival of the pandemic, by the end of the year, as explained to elEconomista.es by Mathieu Herrero, head of the international strategy of the Spanish multinational.
Herrero argues that Áreas is favored by its geographical diversification -it is present in 10 countries in Europe and America- and business diversification, with almost 2,000 points of sale on highways, airports, train stations and urban leisure and business centers.
New opportunities
The manager argues that, despite the fact that the presence in airports reports half of the business, the establishments in other transport nodes have helped the group to overcome the effects of the pandemic better than other competitors, although the next large contracts are expected from New to the airfield.
Once the large concessions that had been paralyzed during the pandemic were awarded in Europe, Áreas now has its focus on the other side of the Atlantic, where the greatest growth currently occurs and new opportunities: “Only in the United States are there more airports with more of 10 million passengers per year that all over Europe gathers”, exemplifies Herrero. As of today, Spain and Portugal represent 30% of the company’s business, France another 30%, and the remaining 40% is shared between the United States, Latin America and other European countries, mainly Italy and Germany.
At the moment, contracts and concessions are multiplying. Last February, Aena awarded Áreas 64% of the restaurant offer at the Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas airport, which will thus have 35 stores out of the 55 total distributed among all the terminals and which will operate under twenty different brands.
The Áreas offer will allow the group an estimated annual income of 125 million euros and involves the management of both international brands, such as Burger King or Starbucks, and national ones, such as Rodilla and SantaGloria. After the award, Óscar Vela, the group’s global CEO, admitted that “winning once more the tender for the Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas airport strengthens our position as a world leader in the en route catering sector”, insisting that “we want to make Madrid airport our best commercial showcase and a benchmark for en route catering in the world”.
Just a few weeks following winning this contract, Áreas also won the tender for the William P. Hobby airport in Houston (Texas, USA), where it will operate 10 stores with an expected turnover of 445 million euros in ten years.
US growth
In this case, the company plans to invest 18 million euros in renewing the gastronomic offer of this airport, which serves close to 15 million passengers per year and adds flights to almost 60 destinations throughout the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean. . The Houston City Council, which manages the airport, chose Areas, it said, “because of its ability to implement local concepts in the restaurant offer along with other international proposals, including the presence of chef Ronnie Killen, with Killen’s Barbecue”. Likewise, the firm will incorporate brands such as Yard House, SpindleTap Brewery, ThroughGood Coffee Bistro & Bar, The Spot or Starbucks.
Among the large contracts signed this year, the awarding of the catering service at the Guadalajara airport in Mexico, one of the most important in the country, with traffic of 20 million passengers per year, also stands out. In this case, Áreas will operate eight new stores distributed over 1,000 square meters, which is equivalent to managing 50% of the airport’s catering.
In April, the company also acquired catering services at the Ifema fairgrounds (Madrid), where it will invest 9 million and operate 32 establishments over the next ten years for 121 million, and at the Dresden station (Germany). , one of the main ones in the country, with a traffic of 60,000 daily passengers. In the latter case, Áreas expects to generate sales of more than 60 million euros in the next ten years of concession.
Pax Lux Equityco, the group’s parent company, with tax headquarters in Luxembourg, closed last year with sales of 1,698.4 million euros, more than double the year before. Losses were also reduced from 112.1 million to 31.4 million euros. It must also be taken into account that following the victory over Aena over the rental price, the company has reformulated its accounts, reducing losses. Initially, the company had declared losses following taxes of 245.1 million euros, but it has finally improved them, once reformulated, by 133 million. The operating result, likewise, has gone from being negative with losses of 127.5 million to black numbers of 5.5 million.
This is due to the fact that the Government forced Aena to reduce the rental prices for its airport stores and restaurants in all the contracts that were in force on March 14, 2020, with the start of the confinement due to the pandemic. .
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