TAP handling sale price hinges on licence tender outcome
Menzies says the price for TAP’s sale of its handling stake depends on whether it wins new airport licences, a factor tied to the airline’s privatisation process.
Menzies Aviation has agreed to buy TAP’s 49.9% stake in Portuguese ground handling company SPdH under terms that vary depending on the outcome of an ongoing airport handling licence tender, Menzies chairman Hassan El-Houry told ECO. The structure matters because the disposal is presented as part of a broader process linked to TAP’s privatisation and the future of airport services in Portugal.
According to El-Houry, financial advisers modelled different scenarios and assigned a value to each one. He said the agreement was “defined based on the two scenarios”: Menzies either secures the new handling licences or does not. TAP announced this month that it had reached a deal to sell its 49.9% holding in the former Groundforce to Menzies, which already owns the remaining 50.1%, but no price was disclosed.
The licence tender is still unresolved. A Spanish consortium formed by Clece and South ranked first in the competition launched by ANAC, Portugal’s civil aviation regulator, but ANAC has started an exclusion process after required documents were not submitted, according to ECO’s previous reporting cited in the interview. If that exclusion is confirmed, Menzies, which came second, could obtain the licences to operate for the next seven years at the airports of Lisbon, Porto and Faro.
El-Houry also said Menzies would meet all of SPdH’s obligations to creditors, including TAP. TAP’s annual report shows about €24 million owed by Menzies Aviation Portugal, including service-related amounts due this year and next, insolvency-related claims and other pending credits. “If it is in the annual report and we owe the money, we will fulfil all our financial obligations,” he said.
The interview also indicates that Menzies and TAP have signed a new six-year services contract alongside the share sale, and that the different elements of the relationship are linked. Asked about TAP’s privatisation, El-Houry said a sale of the airline would “of course” bring change, while adding that any decision on the future shareholder should be made by the Portuguese government and institutions.
Originally published at Eco.pt