Topic: FWAG released January traffic results last week, which came in better than expected. Moreover, the Athens International Airport IPO gives a read across for FWAG's valuation.

Strong start into the year: In January, the group started strongly into the year with double digit passenger growth of 12% yoy to 2.33m passengers (vs. eNuW: 2.11m). Noteworthy is the strong growth in Vienna's long-haul destinations, with growth rates for North America of 22% yoy and Far East of 26% yoy, but also ongoing momentum of the most important destination of Western Europe (+12.5% yoy; 35% of VIE passengers)

Passenger momentum expected to slow down: Going forward, we expect the strong momentum to slow down, as the strong recovery of FY23 created a high comparable base. All in all, we expect  passenger growth rates to decrease to low single digits for the next months, with an average growth of 3.4% for FY24e (see p. 2).

Top-line growth to remain strong: With a 3.4% pax growth (eNuW) and a 9.7% airport fee increase (c. 40% of group sales), FWAG looks set to continue FY'24e with strong sales growth of 9.6% (eNuW). On the other hand, margins seem to have reached cruising altitude, meaning that earnings growth should mainly stem from further top-line growth, going forward.

CAPEX cycle officially started: Last week, FWAG officially started the construction of the southern Terminal expansion and expects total CAPEX of € 420m (eNuW: € 503m) for this project. The terminal should add c. 30k sqm of additional shopping and restaurant areas, which should lead to incremental revenues of c. € 1 per passenger (i.e., € 33m incremental sales in FY'27e), once fully up and running.

Cross-read from Greece: On Feb. 7th, Athen International Airport SA (AIA) successfully went public, showing a current FY24e valuation of 4.8x EV/sales and 7.7x EV/EBITDA. Compared to FWAG, this implies a fair peer valuation on EV/sales (FWAG: 4.2x), whereas on EV/EBITDA FWAG trades on a slight premium (9.4x EV/EBITDA). This should hoewever stem from AIA's higher profitability due to outsourcing of key handling activities. (see p. 2 for full peer group analysis)

Hence, we reiterate our HOLD recommendation with an unchanged PT of € 52.00, based on DCF.