Aer Rianta International declares dividend of €100m

Aer Rianta International (ARI), the overseas travel retail arm of airport operator DAA, this year declared a dividend of €100 million.

Accounts for the business, which operates in 12 markets and employs more than 3,000, show the payment was made as pretax profits at the company more than halved to €16.57 million.

The drop in pretax profits was mainly due to income from subsidiaries and joint ventures decreasing by 41 per cent from €29.54 million to €17.29 million.

Revenues at ARI increased by 4 per cent from €237.6 million to €246.6 million in the 12 months to the end of December last.

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The €100 million dividend declared last March was paid to DAA over many years but has only been declared in the current year.

Termination

A spokesman for DAA said: “The dividend payment was not a cash payment during the year. ARI is a wholly owned subsidiary of DAA and the transfer of funds within the group occurred over many years.”

The accounts show that last year under directors’ pay, a termination payment of €288,000 for management services was made.

The DAA spokesman said: “This was pay in lieu of contracted notice due under the terms of a director’s contract.” He declined to comment further on the payment as the payment was a contractual matter between ARI and a specific individual.

Former chief executive of ARI, Jack McGowan, left the company in May of last year while former chief development officer with the DAA, John Heffernan, also resigned from the ARI board in February last year.

Apart from the €288,000 payment, pay to directors last year increased from €571,000 to €907,000. The spokesman said ARI had six directors for most of 2018 compared to five directors for most of 2017.

Shareholdings

As well as operating retail businesses in markets including Canada, Cyprus and Bahrain, ARI holds DAA’s shareholdings in in Dusseldorf Airport and Hermes Airports, which operates Larnaca and Paphos airports in Cyprus.

The company will operate several outlets in Abu Dhabi Airport’s new Midfield Terminal, which is due to open in 2020.

Shareholder funds at ARI at the end of last year totalled €385.5 million and had cash of €85 million.

Staff costs last year totalled €40.6 million and numbers employed increased from 909 to 967.